BX  7233  .C33  N4 
Campbell,  R.  J.  1867-1956 
New  theology  sermons 


NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 


•The 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &   CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


NEW  THEOLOGY 
SERMONS 


/      BY 

V 

R.  J.  CAMPBELL,  M.A. 

MINISTER  OF  THE  CITY  TEMPLE,   LONDON 
AUTHOR  OF   "THE   NEW  THEOLOGY" 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1907 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1907, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1907. 


NorijjoolJ  ^rcBS 

J.  B.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Gain  of  Life i 


The  Risen  Christ 

The  Resurrection  Power 

The  Ever-present  Christ 


17 
31 
49 


The  Sinlessness  of  Jesus 65 

The  Gift  of  the  Son       ......  80 

Sin  and  Salvation g3 

From  Death  to  Life m 

The  Atoning  Will 131 

A  Love  that  Died 149 

The  Son  of  Perdition 162 

The  Mistake  of  Sin 177 

Love  Destroying  and  Restoring    .        .        .        .188 

The  Turning  from  Iniquity 202 

The  Cleansing  Life 214 

Our  Moral  Limitations 224 

The  Angel  of  the  Soul 239 

The  Valley  of  Baca 256 

Sweetening  the  Waters  of  Marah        .        .        .  269 

Believing  Prayer 281 


INTRODUCTION 

Most  of  the  sermons  contained  in  this  volume  have 
been  preached  from  the  City  Temple  pulpit  during 
the  last  twelve  months.  Some  of  them  bear  directly 
upon  the  New  Theology  controversy  which  broke  out 
early  in  January  of  the  present  year.  They  contain 
little  or  nothing  of  a  directly  controversial  character, 
but  they  may  be  of  interest  to  the  general  reader  as 
a  practical  demonstration  of  the  way  in  which  the 
principles  of  the  New  Theology,  as  expounded  by 
the  present  writer,  find  a  homiletic  application.  It  is 
sometimes  contended  by  its  critics  that  the  New  The- 
ology is  not  a  gospel.  There  is  no  other  gospel :  the 
New  Theology  is  Christianity  stripped  of  its  mis- 
chievous dogmatic  accretions.  That  it  is  able  to 
make  its  appeal  to  conscience  and  heart  as  well  as  to 
the  intellect  is  surely  demonstrable  from  the  fact 
that  it  can  be  preached,  and  that  people  are  moved 
to  purer  and  nobler  living  by  means  of  it.  Wherever 
and  whenever  the  preaching  of  any  other  kind  of 
theology  succeeds  in  doing  this  it  is  because  it  applies 
the  principles  of  the  New  Theology  without  knowing 
it.  The  name  matters  little,  and  perhaps  it  is  to  be 
regretted  that  it  was  ever  used ;  the  thing  itself  is  as 
old  as  Christianity. 


Vlil  INTRODUCTION 

It  is  frequently  pointed  out  by  assailants  of  the 
New  Theology  that  its  adherents  do  not  agree  in  their 
presentation  of  it.  Do  adherents  of  older  theologies 
agree  ?  It  is  a  patent  fact  that  they  do  not,  and  it  is 
also  a  patent  fact  that  they  are  all  a  wretched  failure : 
the  world  is  gradually  ceasing  to  take  notice  of  them, 
and  they  have  almost  no  influence  upon  either  science 
or  literature,  not  to  speak  of  social  and  political  life. 
Whether  the  New  Theology  will  have  a  different  tale 
to  tell  remains  to  be  seen;  already  there  are  some 
indications  that  it  will. 

But  are  the  differences  in  the  statement  of  the 
New  Theology  so  very  marked?  To  the  present 
writer  it  would  not  matter  if  they  were,  for  all  he 
cares  to  do  is  to  deliver  his  own  message,  and  leave 
the  effect  to  the  test  of  time.  But  it  is  not  true  that 
such  differences  exist.  There  is  no  fundamental  di- 
vergence, except  perhaps  in  regard  to  the  philosophy 
which  underlies  the  theology;  other  differences  are 
trifling.  There  is  general  agreement  in  all  the  main 
positions,  such  as  the  person  of  Christ,  the  Atone- 
ment, the  authority  of  Scripture,  and  the  mission  of 
the  Church.  It  is  perhaps  to  be  expected  that  some 
of  the  preachers  of  the  New  Theology  should  be 
rather  more  timid  and  cautious  in  their  departure 
from  conventional  positions  than  others;  but  there 
can  be  no  standing  still  —  they  must  either  go  on  or 
go  back. 

One  great  question  on  which  divergence  seems  to 
exist  is  that  of  sin.     In  regard  to  that  question  the 


INTRODUCTION  IX 

present  writer  has  nothing  either  to  modify  or  with- 
draw. He  believes  that  the  false  emphasis  which  for 
ages  has  been  placed  upon  the  fact  of  sin  in  the  rela- 
tions of  the  soul  and  God  has  been  harmful,  and  has 
tended  to  divert  attention  from  the  true  work  of  the 
Church  —  the  realisation  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
—  and  also  to  make  men  morbidly  self-conscious. 
There  is  no  sin  against  God  which  is  not  a  sin  against 
man ;  there  is  no  form  of  wrongdoing  which  does  not 
find  a  social  expression.  This  is  true  even  of  secret 
sin,  for  anything  that  tends  to  the  injury  of  one's  own 
moral  nature  injures  society  in  the  long  run.  It 
seems  to  be  perfectly  easy  to  use  exaggerated  lan- 
guage about  sin  and  yet  to  live  a  thoroughly  selfish 
life.  The  sooner  we  get  back  to  a  healthy  realism  in 
our  estimate  of  wrongdoing  the  better.  It  ought  to 
be  self-evident  that  sin  has  never  injured  God  except 
through  man,  and  that  the  moral  value  of  a  man's  life 
is  to  be  measured  by  its  effect  upon  the  common  life 
of  humanity.  All  the  dogmatic  considerations  which 
have  been  woven  around  this  subject  are  either  use- 
less or  untrue,  mostly  the  latter.  It  has  occupied  in 
Christian  thought  a  place  altogether  disproportionate 
to  its  true  worth. 

It  cannot  be  too  clearly  emphasised  that  the  other- 
worldism  of  so-called  orthodox  Christianity  has  in 
reality  nothing  to  do  with  Christianity.  This  is  a 
thing  which  the  average  church-goer  apparently  finds 
it  difficult  to  understand,  and  yet  it  is  beyond  all 
question  that  the  Church  of  Jesus  originally  knew  of 


X  INTRODUCTION 

no  commission  to  get  men  ready  for  a  heaven  beyond 
the  tomb.  In  so  far  as  the  Church  attempts  to  do 
that  now,  she  is  doing  something  which  found  no 
place  in  apostohc  preaching.  The  Church  exists  to 
witness  for  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  for  nothing 
else.  If  she  were  true  to  her  Master's  mind  she  could 
have  no  truce  with  a  social  order  in  which  the  weak 
have  to  go  to  the  wall  and  cruelty  and  oppression  are 
inevitable.  She  ought  not  to  be  patching  up  the 
present  social  fabric,  but  labouring  to  replace  it  by 
a  better.  The  social  work  which  is  being  done  by 
the  Churches  at  present  is  no  doubt  of  great  value  in 
brightening  the  lives  of  the  poor  and  giving  them  a 
helping  hand,  but  for  the  most  part  it  does  not  go  to 
the  root  of  the  matter:  our  whole  industrial  life  to- 
day is  based  upon  a  principle  which  is  fundamentally 
anti-Christian,  and  the  Church  of  Jesus  ought  to 
wage  open  war  upon  it  until  it  is  gone  for  ever. 
Co-operation  must  replace  competition ;  brother- 
hood must  replace  individualism;  the  weakest 
(morally  and  physically)  must  be  the  objects  of  the 
tenderest  care  which  the  community  can  show; 
selfishness  must  be  driven  out  by  love.  This  is  the 
whole  Christian  programme;  nothing  less  than  this 
represents  the  mind  of  Jesus,  and  nothing  other  than 
this  ought  ever  to  have  been  preached  in  His  name. 
It  is  quite  simple  and  clear,  and  yet  it  is  plain  to  all 
the  world  that  the  Church  has  somehow  got  so  far 
away  from  it  that  the  masses  of  the  people  have  ceased 
to  understand  that  she  ever  held  it.     They  identify 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

Christianity  with  church  buildings,  psalm-singing, 
christenings,  penitent  forms,  and  such  like;  they 
never  dream  that  these  things  belong  to  a  circle  of 
ideas  which  are  not  distinctively  Christian  at  all. 
True,  the  Christians  of  the  first  century  held  some 
mistaken  beliefs  as  to  the  manner  in  which  the  king- 
dom of  love  should  come,  but  the  main  thing  to  be 
noted  is  that  they  expected  it  here  on  this  earth. 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  Christian  should  ignore 
belief  in  a  life  to  come,  and  concentrate  only  upon  the 
task  of  bettering  this  world  for  the  sake  of  generations 
yet  unborn:  it  means  the  substitution  of  a  true  for 
a  false  other-worldism.  The  conventional  escha- 
tology  of  the  Churches  is  both  incoherent  and  untrue. 
It  is  so  because  in  reality  it  takes  for  granted  a  view 
of  the  structure  of  the  universe  which  no  one  believes 
or  can  believe  to-day,  and  tries  to  square  this  view 
with  the  facts  of  life  as  we  know  it  —  a  perfectly 
hopeless  task.  The  capacity  of  the  human  mind  for 
entertaining  contradictions  is  considerable,  but  the 
contradictions  of  popular  Christian  eschatology  are 
too  patent  to  be  altogether  ignored.  Thus  we  have 
belief  in  a  physical  resurrection  and  a  distant  judg- 
ment day  side  by  side  with  belief  in  the  present  bliss 
of  the  righteous  and  punishment  of  the  damned. 
Then,  too,  we  have  the  remarkable  silence  of  the 
pulpit  in  regard  to  eternal  (in  the  sense  of  ever- 
lasting) punishment :  the  bald,  unvarnished  doctrine 
shocks  the  moral  sense,  so  it  is  usually  avoided. 
Some  preachers  go  the  length  of  boldly  giving  it  up, 


Xll  INTRODUCTION 

while  continuing  to  preach  the  necessity  of  believing 
in  the  "finished  work"  of  Christ  if  salvation  is  to  be 
secured.  Comparatively  few  seem  to  see  that  the 
moment  this  doctrine  is  eliminated  from  the  con- 
ventional dogmatic  system  of  ideas  the  whole  fabric 
falls  to  the  ground.  Salvation  still  seems  to  be 
thought  of  as  primarily  individualistic,  and  to  con- 
sist in  getting  into  heaven.  By  far  the  weakest  point 
in  connection  with  it  all  is  the  absence  of  a  clear  and 
reasonable  explanation  of  what  is  meant  by  the 
doctrine  of  Atonement.  The  majority  of  preachers 
still  go  on  assuming  or  declaring  that  Jesus  by  His 
death  on  Calvary  obtained  salvation  for  mankind, 
but  they  never  say  how  He  did  it,  for  they  do  not 
know,  and  most  of  them  content  themselves  with 
proclaiming  what  they  call  the  fact  without  pretend- 
ing to  give  any  explanation.  Is  it  not  about  time  that 
all  this  fumbling  ceased,  and  preachers  showed  them- 
selves able  to  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  is  in 
them?  Is  it  not  clear  even  to  the  prejudiced  mind 
that  conventional  Christian  belief  in  the  "Last 
Things"  rests  upon  a  geocentric  view  of  the  universe 
which  has  long  since  passed  away  ?  Is  it  not  equally 
clear  that  the  conventional  doctrine  of  Atonement  is 
derived  from  certain  New  Testament  ideas  which 
have  no  place  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Himself? 
But  for  the  bondage  of  the  letter  of  Scripture  there 
would  be  no  need  to  demonstrate  the  futility  of  the 
so-called  orthodox  way  of  preaching  the  doctrine  of 
Atonement. 


INTRODUCTION  Xlll 

What  we  have  now  to  make  plain  to  the  world 
is  that  as  Christianity  is  the  gospel  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  —  that  is,  the  glad  tidings  of  the  reign  of 
love  —  salvation  must  consist  in  ceasing  to  be  selfish 
and  being  filled  instead  with  the  spirit  of  Christ. 
The  reason  for  trying  to  establish  the  Kingdom  of 
God  here  is  that  humanity  is  one  and  immortal, 
and  must  make  a  beginning  somewhere  if  it  is  to  fulfil 
its  destiny  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  God. 
There  is  no  absolute  dividing  line  between  the  hither 
and  the  yonder;  life  also  is  one,  and  if  a  man  leaves 
this  world  ignorant  and  debased,  ignorant  and 
debased  he  will  begin  on  the  farther  side  of  death. 
The  object  of  the  Christian  evangel  is  to  turn  every 
selfish  being  into  a  loving  being,  every  sinner  into  a 
saviour,  in  order  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  may  be 
fully  realised.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  in- 
dividual salvation  and  no  such  thing  as  a  lonely  or 
hopeless  hell :  salvation  implies  the  living  of  the  in- 
dividual life  in  terms  of  the  whole,  and  hell  is  divine 
love  reclaiming  its  own.  Atonement  is  love  at  work, 
sharing  to  the  full  in  the  disabilities  wrought  by 
selfishness,  that  it  may  break  down  all  the  barriers 
that  selfishness  has  erected  between  man  and  man, 
and  man  and  God. 

This  is  the  gospel  we  have  to  preach,  and  it  centres 
in  Jesus,  because  Jesus  not  only  taught  but  lived  it. 
"For  the  life  was  manifested,  and  we  have  seen  it,  and 
bear  witness,  and  show  unto  you  that  eternal  life  which 
was  with  the  Father,  and  was  manifested  unto  us." 


NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

GAIN   OF   LIFE 

"To  me  to  live  is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  gain."  —  Phil.  i.  21. 

Amongst  apostolic  utterances  this  one  stands  out 
as  a  definite  affirmation  of  the  sohdarity  of  the  life 
that  now  is  with  that  which  is  to  come.  The  spiritu- 
ally-minded man,  it  tells  us,  has  nothing  to  fear 
from  death,  for  it  can  only  mean  the  deepening  of 
the  content  of  his  present  experience  of  life.  It  will 
be  the  enlargement  of  his  consciousness  of  capacity 
for  God.  It  will  not  be  an  entirely  new  experience 
of  truth;  it  will  rather  be  the  fruitage  of  the  experi- 
ence he  now  possesses.  Let  us  try  to  understand 
something  of  this  with  St.  Paul  to  guide  us.  Our 
text  falls  naturally  into  two  parts,  which  are  both 
necessary  to  an  adequate  realisation  of  the  apostle's 
meaning.  It  is  one  of  those  Scriptural  statements 
which  can  be  considered  apart  from  their  context  — 
and  there  are  not  many  of  them.  Indeed,  it  might 
be  said  that  the  two  halves  of  our  text  could  stand 
separately,  and  yet  each  make  good,  clear  sense. 
Unfortunately,  however,  the  former,  "To  me  to 
live  is  Christ,"  is  often  dwelt  upon  to  the  exclusion 


2  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

of  the  latter.  I  am  sure  you  hear  it  a  good  deal 
oftener  than  you  hear  the  second  part  of  our  text, 
"  To  die  is  gain,"  which  is  sometimes  read  as  though 
there  were  no  close  connection  between  the  two ;  and 
yet  it  is  unquestionable  that  in  the  mind  of  the 
apostle  the  two  assertions  are  cognate  aspects  of 
the  same  spiritual  truth.  It  should  not  be  diidficult 
to  discover  what  that  truth  is.  The  best  way,  prob- 
ably, to  deal  with  the  question  that  it  raises  would 
be  to  inquire,  first,  what  St.  Paul  means  to  convey 
to  the  minds  of  his  readers  by  the  expression, 
"To  me  to  live  is  Christ,"  and  secondly,  how  much 
is  implied  in  the  complementary  assertion  that  "  to 
die  is  gain." 

"To  me  to  live  is  Christ."  The  expression  is  a 
somewhat  mystical  one.  That  is,  it  indicates  a 
truth  too  great  for  ordinary  language  or  for  exact 
statement.  It  bears  a  certain  resemblance  to  other 
Pauline  utterances,  such  as,  "I  am  crucified  with 
Christ,  nevertheless  I  live;  yet  not  I,  but  Christ 
liveth  in  me."  Or,  "It  pleased  God  to  reveal  His  Son 
in  me."  Again,  "  Christ  in  you  the  hope  of  glory." 
These  are  characteristic  Pauline  expressions,  but 
they  can  be  paralleled  in  other  parts  of  the  New 
Testament,  especially  the  Johannine  writings,  where 
they  appear  with  some  slight  variation  in  form. 
For  example,  "  He  that  eateth  My  flesh  and  drink- 
eth  My  blood  dwelleth  in  Me  and  I  in  him."  "Abide 
in  Me,  and  I  in  you.  As  the  branch  cannot  bear 
fruit  of  itself  except  it  abide  in  the  vine,  no  more 


GAIN  OF  LIFE  3 

can  ye,  except  ye  abide  in  Me."  Here  our  Lord  Him- 
self is  represented  as  speaking.  But  in  the  first 
Epistle  of  St.  John,  chapter  v.,  verse  12,  much  the 
same  thing  is  stated  —  "He  that  hath  the  Son  hath 
life,  and  he  that  hath  not  the  Son  of  God  hath  not 
life."  The  likeness  between  these  various  state- 
ments is  at  once  obvious,  even  though  the  thoughts 
for  which  they  severally  stand  are  not  quite  the 
same.  But  there  is  a  foundation  truth,  a  fact  of 
spiritual  experience,  common  to  them  all.  It  is  that 
of  the  mystical  union  between  the  Christ,  the  Eternal 
Son,  and  the  soul  of  the  Christian  believer.  Plainly 
enough,  too,  not  only  St.  Paul,  but  the  writer  of  the 
fourth  gospel  and  of  the  Johannine  epistles,  identi- 
fies this  Christ  or  Eternal  Son  in  some  way  with 
Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

It  is  usually  taken  for  granted  by  readers  of  the 
New  Testament  that,  in  all  St.  Paul's  burning  words 
about  the  Christ  whom  he  evidently  loved  with  such 
passionate  devotion,  he  is  speaking  of  Him  in  terms 
of  the  actual  Jesus  of  Gahlee;  but  this  statement 
ought  not  to  be  made  without  the  most  careful  quali- 
fication. There  is  no  evidence  that  St.  Paul  ever  saw 
Jesus  in  the  flesh.  He  only  saw  Him  in  his  ecstatic 
vision  on  the  road  to  Damascus.  He  never  refers  to 
the  details  of  Jesus'  early  life.  They  seem  to  have 
possessed  only  a  secondary  interest  for  him.  Almost 
the  only  allusions  he  makes  to  them  are  in  the  pas- 
sages about  the  institution  of  the  Lord's  Supper 
and  the  attestation  of  the  Resurrection.    Take  the 


4  NEW  THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

former  —  "  For  I  have  received  of  the  Lord  that 
v^hich  also  I  dehvered  unto  you,  That  the  Lord 
Jesus  the  same  night  in  which  He  was  betrayed, 
took  bread;  and  when  He  had  given  thanks,  He 
brake  it,  and  said.  Take,  eat,  this  is  My  body." 
The  second,  the  one  concerning  the  Resurrection, 
is  this  —  "  First  He  was  seen  of  Cephas,  then  of 
the  Twelve,  then  of  about  five  hundred  brethren  at 
once.  .  .  .  Last  of  all  He  was  seen  of  me  also,  as  one 
born  out  of  due  time."  These  are  almost  the  only 
references  that  St.  Paul  makes  to  the  earthly  life  of 
Jesus.  He  never  says  a  word  about  the  actual  human 
life,  with  its  joys  and  sorrows,  successes  and  failures, 
victories  and  defeats.  He  says  nothing  about  the 
Jesus  who  gathered  the  multitudes  around  Him 
upon  the  hillsides  of  Galilee;  nothing  about  the 
Jesus  who  wept  over  Jerusalem;  the  Jesus  who 
called  the  little  children  unto  Him,  saying  to  those 
who  would  have  kept  them  away,  "  Suffer  the  little 
children  to  come  unto  Me,  and  forbid  them  not, 
for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven";  nothing 
about  the  Jesus  who  was  a  welcome  guest  in  the 
home  of  Mary  and  Martha.  Now,  remember  that 
St.  Paul  wrote  his  letters  before  a  word  of  the 
gospels  was  written.  This  omission  therefore  to 
make  any  direct  sympathetic  reference  to  the 
earthly  life  of  Jesus  is  remarkable,  especially  when 
we  remember  that  St.  Paul  did  more  than  any  other 
apostle  to  make  Christianity  a  world-religion,  and 
that  his  personal  devotion  to  his  Lord  was  so  com- 


GAIN   OF   LIFE  5 

plete  and  all-absorbing.  What  is  the  explanation  of 
his  silence  ?  Well,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  as  follows : 
St.  Paul's  mind  was  dominated  by  one  great  thought, 
a  thought  which  related  him  rather  to  the  risen  and 
exalted  Jesus  than  to  the  Jesus  of  the  days  of  His 
flesh.  St.  Paul  knew  that  he  was  living  his  life 
in  vital  relationship  to  the  Divine  Man  of  pre- 
Christian  thought  and  experience.  Now  I  want  you 
to  listen  very  carefully  to  this.  It  is  very  important 
that  we  should  understand  just  who  or  what  this 
Divine  Man  was  held  to  be,  not  only  by  St.  Paul  but 
by  St.  Paul's  teachers  and  forerunners.  You  can 
hardly  imagine  that  Paul  came  fresh  to  his  work  of 
witnessing  Christ  in  the  world  with  no  ideas  to 
declare  except  those  which  he  obtained  direct  from 
heaven  at  the  time  when  he  was  called  to  be  an 
apostle.  By  the  Divine  Man,  then,  was  meant 
that  side  or  expression  of  the  being  of  God  from 
which  the  finite  universe  and  all  mankind  have  come 
forth.  The  idea  in  the  mind  of  these  old  thinkers 
from  whom  St.  Paul  learned  this  truth  was  that 
the  being  of  God,  though  infinitely  complex,  and 
having  a  myriad  aspects  of  which  we  can  know 
nothing,  is  in  one  of  those  aspects  the  source  of 
humanity  as  distinct  from  all  else.  Whatever  else 
he  may  be,  God  is  eternally  man.  He  is  all  that  we 
mean  by  ideal  manhood,  and  infinitely  more.  There 
is  therefore  eternally  in  the  heart  of  God  a  fontal  or 
archetypal  Man  to  whom  we  all  belong  and  whose 
life  is  the  light  of  men.     I  think  this  is  a  glorious 


6  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

idea,  and  irresistibly  true.  It  must  be  true.  St. 
Paul  did  not  invent  it,  as  we  see  from  its  independent 
expression  in  the  fourth  gospel.  It  sprang  from 
the  union  of  Greek  thought  with  Hebrew  religion. 
It  does  not  seem  to  be  generally  recognised  that  Paul 
almost  certainly  owed  a  great  deal  to  Greek  teach- 
ing as  well  as  to  Jewish  Rabbis.  He  seems  to  have 
been  rather  proud  of  the  fact  that  he  was  a  citizen 
of  no  mean  city,  the  Greek  city  of  Tarsus,  and  nu- 
merous references  in  his  writings  prove  that  he  was 
well  acquainted  with  Greek  literature.  I  think  if  I 
were  to  take  out  of  St.  Paul's  Epistles  every  citation 
from  a  Greek  master  it  would  occasion  some  of  you 
a  certain  amount  of  surprise  to  realise  the  extent 
of  his  indebtedness  to  Greek  thinkers  no  less  than 
to  his  own  Jewish  teachers.  For  centuries  before 
the  Roman  conquest  of  Asia  Minor  Palestine  had 
formed  part  of  the  Syro-Greek  dominion  of  the 
Ptolemies,  and  it  was  at  one  time  a  question  whether 
Jewish  civilisation,  and  even  Jewish  religion,  would 
not  be  permanently  assimilated  to  Greek  models. 
It  was  to  prevent  that,  in  fact,  that  a  century  and  a 
half  before  Jesus  was  bom  the  great  national  in- 
surrection of  the  Maccabees  took  place.  At  this 
very  moment,  too,  a  great  Graeco- Jewish  intellectual 
centre  had  grown  up  in  the  city  of  Alexandria,  where 
one  of  the  most  eminent  of  ancient  thinkers,  Philo, 
a  contemporary  of  Jesus,  taught  a  doctrine  in  which 
something  like  the  theory  of  the  Divine  Man  was 
worked  out  and  made  the  keystone  of  the  system. 


GAIN   OF   LIFE  7 

There  was,  too,  in  existence  at  this  time  a  vast 
apocalyptic  literature,  only  one  perfect  specimen 
of  which  has  come  down  to  us  —  I  mean  the  Book 
of  Daniel.  This  book  seems  to  have  been  written 
either  immediately  before  or  during  the  Maccabean 
insurrection,  to  hearten  the  people  of  Israel  against 
their  oppressors.  There  is  one  remarkable  allusion 
in  that  book  to  the  contemporary  belief  in  the  ex- 
istence of  the  archetypal  Divine  Man  —  you  know 
the  passage  I  mean.  It  is  that  wherein  we  are  told 
that  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego  were  cast 
into  the  burning  fiery  furnace  because  they  refused 
to  worship  the  image  which  Nebuchadnezzar  the 
king  had  set  up.  The  whole  story  is,  of  course, 
figurative,  parabolic,  but  it  is  told  with  intense 
dramatic  power.  The  tyrant  inquires,  "Did  we 
not  cast  three  men  bound  into  the  midst  of  the  fire  ? 
.  .  .  Behold,  I  see  four  men  loose,  walking  in  the 
midst  of  the  fire,  and  they  have  no  hurt;  and  the 
form  of  the  fourth  is  like  a  son  of  God."  Here  is 
a  distinct  allusion  to  this  Graeco- Jewish  conception 
of  the  Divine  Man,  who  is  author  and  architect  of 
all  that  is  in  this  wonderful  universe  of  ours.  I  say 
that  St.  Paul  was  no  stranger  to  this  idea,  which, 
indeed,  colours  all  his  thinking.  It  lends  him  in- 
spiration for  his  great  and  noble  work,  for  to  him 
the  Divine  Man  was  Jesus,  or  perhaps  it  would  be 
better  to  say  that  the  one  perfect  incarnation  of  the 
Divine  Man  on  earth  was  Jesus.  St.  Paul  regarded 
this  as  the  greatest  discovery  of  his  life.     He  never 


8  NEW  THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

tried  to  smooth  away  all  the  inconsistencies  or 
obscurities  of  his  mode  of  presenting  this  truth  to 
his  converts.  He  took  it  for  granted.  He  preached 
it  in  season  and  out  of  season.  For  him  it  was 
enough  that  Jesus,  the  very  Jesus  who  had  lived 
in  Galilee  and  been  crucified  in  Jerusalem,  was  the 
Divine  Man  from  heaven.  He  says  so  with  perfect 
clearness.  There  is  nothing  equivocal  about  his 
language  in  this  regard.  Into  the  question  as  to 
whether  that  Divine  Man  who  is  the  source  of  all 
creation  and  of  every  human  life  could  become  com- 
pletely incarnate  in  any  one  human  being  he  does 
not  enter.  He  seems  to  take  for  granted  that,  in 
so  far  as  one  human  life  could  reveal  the  eternal 
Divine  Man,  Jesus  did  it.  Nor  does  he  mean  that 
Jesus  was  merely  the  vehicle  or  the  tabernacle  of 
that  heavenly  manhood.  To  St.  Paul,  Jesus  was 
the  Divine  Man  himself,  the  Divine  Man  self- 
limited,  but  none  the  less  the  very  source  and  soul 
of  the  ideal.  "He  emptied  Himself,"  he  tells  us, 
"taking  upon  Him  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  being 
found  in  fashion  as  a  man;  He  humbled  Himself, 
and  became  obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death 
of  the  cross.  Wherefore  God  also  hath  highly  ex- 
alted Him,  and  given  Him  a  name  that  is  above 
every  name,  that  at  the  name  of  Jesus  every  knee 
should  bow,  of  things  in  heaven,  and  things  in  earth, 
and  things  under  the  earth,  and  that  every  tongue 
should  confess  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord  to  the 
glory  of  God  the  Father."     There  is  no  mistaking 


GAIN   OF   LIFE  9 

St.  Paul's  meaning  in  the  use  of  such  words  as 
these. 

From  this  root  principle  St.  Paul  derives  his  whole 
gospel.  Henceforth  he  relates  everything  to  the 
Divine  Man,  the  risen  and  exalted  Jesus.  He  is 
possessed  by  the  thought.  He  loves  the  risen  Lord 
with  his  whole  soul.  He  thinks  of  Jesus  no  longer 
after  the  flesh,  no  longer  as  the  Carpenter  of  Naza- 
reth, but  as  the  great  creative  ideal,  the  fontal 
personality  who  was  before  all  ages  and  in  whom 
all  things  consist.  It  is  with  this  ideal  Christ  that 
the  Epistles  are  mainly  concerned,  not  with  the  Jesus 
of  Galilee.  Indeed,  he  warns  us  against  dwelling 
upon  the  latter  thought  too  much.  "Henceforth 
we  know  no  man  after  the  flesh.  Yea,  though  we 
have  known  Christ  Himself  after  the  flesh,  yet  now 
henceforth  we  know  Him  so  no  more."  The  life 
that  Jesus  lived,  he  maintained,  is  the  life  that  we 
ought  all  to  seek  to  live.  It  is  the  life  that  God  has 
meant  for  us;  that  is,  we  too  ought  to  manifest  the 
Divine  Man.  We  already  belong  to  Him,  but  to 
realise  that  fact  and  to  live  in  the  spirit  of  it  is  to 
escape  from  the  bondage  of  sin  and  dread,  and  to 
Hve  the  life  that  is  eternal.  This  is  what  this  great 
man  means  by  the  saying,  "To  me  to  live  is  Christ." 
He  means  that  the  true  life  for  any  man  to  live  is  the 
life  that  manifests  the  divine  manhood  from  which 
we  came  forth  and  unto  which,  by  the  victory  of 
redeeming  love,  we  shall  return. 

It  should  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  there 


lO  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

is  an  intense  personal  experience  here.  The  Apostle 
is  not  merely  engrossed  with  an  impersonal  ideal. 
He  knows  his  Lord,  knows  Him  for  himself,  knows 
Him,  as  it  were,  face  to  face  and  heart  to  heart; 
and  he  is  possessed  by  the  conviction  that  he  and 
his  master  are  one  in  a  union  so  close  that  the  lesser 
is  lost  and  fulfilled  in  the  greater.  It  is  difficult 
to  find  an  analogy  for  this  spiritual  experience. 
Perhaps  the  nearest  we  can  come  to  it  is  that  of  the 
father  who  lives  his  life  again  in  the  career  of  his 
boy,  or  the  woman  whose  whole  existence  is  bound 
up  with  that  of  her  lover,  or  the  soldier  or  the  clans- 
man of  olden  days  whose  body  and  soul  were  will- 
ingly yielded  to  the  service  of  his  chief,  a  service  in 
which  all  the  value  of  life  was  summed  up  for  him. 
You  know  it  is  possible  for  one  personality  to  fulfil 
itself,  as  it  were,  in  ministering  to  and  in  living  again 
in  the  career  of  another.  This  is  what  St.  Paul  did, 
and  the  sentence,  "To  me  to  Hve  is  Christ,"  is  the 
expression  of  it. 

Nor  has  Paul  been  alone  in  this  feeling  for  the 
glorified  Jesus.  Many  of  the  best  and  noblest  of 
our  race  have  felt  it  and  declared  it.  Some  of  you 
who  are  listening  to  me  in  this  congregation  to-night 
know  it  for  yourselves.  You  could  say,  like  St.  Paul, 
"Tome  to  live  is  Christ" — like  Bernard  of  Clairvaux, 

Jesus,  my  only  joy  be  Thou, 

As  Thou  my  prize  wilt  be; 
Jesus,  be  Thou  my  glory  now, 

And  through  eternity. 


GAIN   OF   LIFE  II 

I  want  you  all  to  feel  —  those  of  you  who  can  say 
that,  and  those  of  you  who  cannot  —  that  at  any 
rate  it  represents  an  experience  deep  and  real.  It 
was  the  dominant  experience,  it  was  the  central 
truth  of  the  Gospel  preached  by  the  first  Christians. 
This  then  is  the  truth  declared  in  the  former  part 
of  our  text  —  "To  me  to  Hve  is  Christ." 

What  about  the  second  ^ — -"To  die  is  gain"? 
Now,  unless  I  am  greatly  mistaken,  there  is  some- 
thing suggested  here  which  very  few  people  believe 
nowadays,  more  especially  those  who  profess  and 
call  themselves  Christians.  For  what  does  your 
average  Christian  think  about  death?  First,  he  is 
afraid  of  it  —  that  is,  until  the  hour  of  death  actually 
arrives,  but  then,  as  I  have  been  told,  most  people 
cease  to  be  afraid.  In  the  ordinary  swirl  of  life  your 
Christian  is  afraid  of  death.  He  may  sing  hymns 
about  it,  and  make  pious  references  to  it,  but  he 
does  not  want  to  die  —  not  he.  Perhaps  this  is  to 
some  extent  a  merciful  provision  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence to  secure  that  we  shall  pay  proper  attention 
to  the  value  of  the  present. 

Morbid  other-worldliness  is  unhealthy,  but  morbid 
fear  of  death  should  be  considered  equally  so. 
There  would  be  no  such  fear  if  men  could  be  in- 
duced to  live  their  lives  in  the  spirit  of  the  principle 
of  St.  Paul.  What  that  principle  is  we  have  already 
seen.  Further,  your  average  Christian  regards 
death  as  the  winding  up  of  everything.  It  spells 
finality.     At  the  moment  of  death  the  destiny  is 


12  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

fixed.  He  does  not  tell  you  why  it  should  be  so. 
He  thinks  he  believes  that  it  is  so.  The  Roman 
Catholic  beheves  in  a  purgatory  of  greater  or  less 
duration  for  all  the  imperfect  people  who  pass 
through  the  great  change,  excepting  those  who  die 
in  mortal  sin.  For  these  he  holds  there  is  no  hope ; 
throughout  eternity  they  must  continue  to  endure 
unspeakable  agony  and  be  banished  from  the  pres- 
ence of  God.  The  conventional  Protestant  belief 
is  even  worse,  however  it  may  be  toned  down  or 
disguised.  It  is  that  at  the  moment  of  death  the 
destiny  of  the  soul  is  fixed  for  weal  or  woe  eternally. 
Certain  exceptional  teachers  speak,  indeed,  of  what 
they  call  "the  larger  hope,"  or  "the  second  oppor- 
tunity" for  accepting  divine  grace,  and  so  on  and 
so  forth.  The  majority  of  preachers  believe  in  some 
such  relief  to  the  horror  of  wholesale  damnation, 
but  they  are  careful  not  to  say  so,  because  they  im- 
agine that  to  assert  it  would  weaken  the  Gospel 
appeal.  What  they  do  not  seem  to  see  is  that  the 
only  Gospel  appeal  which  has  ever  had  real  spiritual 
power  is  the  appeal  from  which  all  such  considera- 
tions are  excluded.  To  believe  in  everlasting  dam- 
nation or  even  in  the  "larger  hope"  is  to  show  that 
you  have  never  understood  the  Gospel  and  do  not 
even  understand  what  hell  is.  You  have  a  wrong 
view  of  the  meaning  both  of  life  and  death.  Do 
you  think  that  St.  Paul  held  such  a  view?  I  am 
perfectly  sure  he  did  not,  great  as  his  intellectual 
limitations  may  have  been  in  other  respects.     For 


GAIN   OF   LIFE  I3 

instance,  St.  Paul  seems  to  have  believed  in  the 
visible  second  advent  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 
He  thought  He  would  come  in  his  own  lifetime.  At 
the  beginning  of  his  ministry  he  brings  this  belief 
into  every  one  of  his  discourses.  But  in  the  letter, 
part  of  which  we  have  read  together  to-night,  and 
whence  our  text  is  taken,  a  writing  which  represents 
the  mature  thought  of  Paul  the  aged,  waiting  in 
prison  for  his  martyrdom,  you  see  a  change  of  view. 
The  Apostle  no  longer  dwells  upon  the  thought  that 
Jesus  is  coming  again  upon  the  clouds  of  heaven, 
and  that  suddenly  and  cataclysmically  the  kingdom 
of  God  shall  be  established  upon  earth  and  the 
enemies  of  truth  destroyed.  Not  so.  Instead  of 
that  he  says  gently  and  sweetly,  "I  long  to  depart 
and  to  be  with  Christ,  which  is  far  better."  You 
see  there  is  an  evident  change  in  the  Apostle's  out- 
look, which  shows  that  there  had  been  a  hmitation 
of  view  at  the  beginning  of  his  ministry.  But  it  is 
not  so  here.  Nowhere  in  the  writings  of  St.  Paul 
from  first  to  last  can  we  find  anything  that  answers 
to  the  conventional  Catholic  or  Protestant  view  of 
the  destiny  of  the  soul  after  death.  What,  then, 
did  St.  Paul  think  about  death  and  the  hfe  that  lies 
beyond?  Well,  I  think  I  can  tell  you.  It  all 
follows  from  what  he  thought  about  Christ.  To 
him  hfe  consisted  in  manifesting  Christ  the  Divine 
Man.  This  was  to  him  a  soul-absorbing  passion, 
governing  and  transforming  every  activity  of  his 
nature.     It  was  the  sum  of  his  interests,  his  all- 


14  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

inclusive  joy.  Hence  he  would  say  with  fervent 
sincerity,  "To  me  to  live  is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  — 
more  Christ." 

I  want  to  show  you  before  I  close  what  a  flood 
of  light  this  sheds  upon  the  Hfc  beyond  the  tomb. 
Let  me  tell  you  my  own  conviction  about  this  Pauline 
thought.  I  believe  we  are  living  now  at  the  heart 
of  things,  only  we  do  not  realise  it.  The  being  of 
God  is  a  circle  with  its  centre  everywhere  and  its 
circumference  nowhere.  Everywhere  is  here.  Every- 
when  is  now.  Life  is  not  a  matter  of  hither  and 
yonder,  but  of  higher  and  lower.  We  are  here  to 
manifest,  against  the  dark  background  of  limitation, 
the  nature  of  the  Divine  Man.  There  is  no  other 
way  of  manifesting  Him.  To  manifest  Christ 
perfectly  in  a  world  that  had  never  known  pain  or 
struggle  would  be  impossible.  One  Paul  is  worth 
ten  thousand  seraphs  as  an  expression  of  the  inner- 
most of  God.  Just  in  proportion  as  we  can  do  this 
we  prepare  our  next  world. 

The  tissues  of  the  life  to  be 

We  weave  with  colours  all  our  own, 

And  in  the  field  of  destiny 
We  reap  as  we  have  sown. 

Every  loving  thought  and  deed  knits  us  in  closer  and 
ever  closer  fellowship  to  the  eternal  truth.  Con- 
versely, every  selfish,  material  desire  blinds  us  to  that 
truth.  Every  act  of  sin  prepares  its  own  hell,  and 
there  can  be  no  escaping  it,  for  God  is  not  mocked. 


GAIN    OF   LIFE  15 

I  sent  my  soul  through  the  Invisible, 
Some  letter  of  that  After-life  to  spell; 

And  by-and-by  my  Soul  returned  to  me, 

And  whispered,  I  myself  am  Heaven  and  Hell. 

Faith  in  Christ  is  faith  in  love,  the  love  of  man 
wedded  to  the  love  of  God.  Nothing  in  the  long 
run  can  prevail  against  that  love  in  this  world  or  the 
next.  It  makes  hell;  it  is  heaven.  I  believe  that 
the  mere  crossing  of  the  mysterious  gulf  called 
physical  death  matters  very  little.  It  only  means  a 
change  of  lights.  The  wicked  man  finds  that  he  has 
been  living  by  false  values,  and  the  good  man  finds 
how  much  more  has  yet  to  be  learned  and  how  many 
richer  depths  of  the  divine  nature  are  yet  to  be 
plumbed.  One  thing  we  shall  all  find,  and  that  is 
that  the  truest  hfe  is  the  Hfe  that  Jesus  hved.  That 
is  the  eternal  hfe,  whether  here  or  beyond,  this  side 
or  the  farther  side  of  the  tomb.  Live  it  we  must  by 
the  redeeming  power  of  God.  We  shall  make  our 
bed  in  pain  until  we  do;  and,  the  nearer  a  man 
approaches  to  the  stature  of  a  perfect  man  in  Christ 
Jesus,  the  more  he  will  yearn  over  the  failure  of  the 
lost,  the  more  he  will  long  to  lift  up  and  heal  and 
save.  How  can  Christhood  ever  be  content  with 
anything  less?  In  the  presence  of  sin  and  suffer- 
ing, here  or  on  the  farther  side  of  death,  what  do 
you  suppose  the  love  of  Christ  is  doing?  What  can 
it  be  doing  but  identifying  itself  with  the  lot  of  the 
sinner  and  laying  itself  alongside  every  darksome 
experience  until  it  has  transformed  it  into  light  and 


1 6  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

love?  The  love  of  Christ  must  be  making  war 
against  sin  until  He  had  subdued  all  things  unto 
Himself.  "For  He  must  reign  until  He  hath  put 
all  enemies  under  His  feet.  The  last  enemy  that 
shall  be  destroyed  is  death."  This  is  the  faith  of 
St.  Paul,  in  the  power  of  which  he  lived  and  died. 
Thus  it  is  that  to  the  spiritual  man  to  die  is  gain. 
It  is  the  shattering  of  limitations,  the  opening  of 
the  prison  to  them  that  are  bound,  the  discovery  of 
new  faculties,  new  powers,  wider  and  deeper  ex- 
perience of  God;  it  is  more  Christ.  "To  me  to 
live  is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  gain." 

Think  when  our  one  soul  understands 

The  great  word  that  makes  all  things  new, 
When  earth  breaks  up  and  heaven  expands, 

How  will  the  change  strike  me  and  you, 
In  the  house  not  made  with  hands? 

Oh,  I  must  feel  your  brain  prompt  mine, 
Your  heart  anticipate  my  heart, 

You  must  be  just  before  in  fine, 
See  and  make  me  see  for  your  part 

New  depths  of  the  divine. 


THE    RISEN    CHRIST 

He  is  not  here;  for  He  is  risen,  as  He  said. 
Come  see  the  place  where  the  Lord  lay. — 
Matt,  xxviii.  6. 

The  question  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  one 
which  does  not  easily  lend  itself  to  dispassionate 
discussion,  for  so  many  important  issues  are  bound 
up  with  it  that  few  people  are  able  to  regard  it  with 
an  open  mind.  The  almost  universally  held  opinion 
is  that  Christianity  stands  or  falls  by  the  behef  that 
its  Founder  actually  rose  from  the  dead.  This  is 
not  quite  the  case,  but  it  is  so  nearly  the  case  that 
few  will  be  inclined  to  dispute  it.  Still,  a  better 
and  more  accurate  way  of  describing  the  situation 
would  be  to  say  that  Christianity  stands  or  falls 
by  faith  in  the  risen  Christ,  and  that  as  a  historical 
religion  it  started  with  a  belief  that  its  Founder  had 
revealed  Himself  to  His  disciples  after  the  world 
beheved  Him  to  be  dead.  This  belief  had  far- 
reaching  consequences,  for  it  demonstrated  the 
truth  that  wickedness  cannot  kill  anything  which 
is  really  of  God,  and  that  love  is  in  the  end  victorious 
over  hate.  This  way  of  stating  the  case  is  one  which 
not  only  answers  to  the  facts,  but  would  hold  good 
under  any  theory  as  to  the  circumstances  attending 
c  17 


1 8  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  What  I  now  wish  to  do 
is  to  set  before  you  what  I  take  to  be  its  everyday 
spiritual  value. 

The  words  of  our  text  are,  taken  literally,  not  quite 
consistent  with  the  account  given  in  the  other  gospels. 
Indeed,  it  will  be  no  news  to  you  that  there  is  no 
subject  indicated  in  the  New  Testament  on  which 
the  various  accounts  are  so  conflicting;  but  it  is  a 
curious  thing  that  so  few  people  seem  able  to  read 
them  critically  and  get  beneath  the  various  discrep- 
ancies to  the  sahent  and  unassailable  fact  with  which 
they  are  concerned.  It  is  impossible  to  reconcile 
the  various  gospel  accounts  of  the  details  of  the 
resurrection  and  post-resurrection  appearances  of 
Jesus;  but  one  thing  is  unescapable,  namely,  that 
if  the  primitive  Christians  had  not  been  absolutely 
certain  that  they  had  seen  Jesus  alive  after  His 
crucifixion  and  burial,  they  would  never  have  dared 
to  preach  Him  to  the  world.  This  belief  made 
all  the  difference  to  their  feelings  and  conduct. 
For  an  expression  as  to  what  they  really  felt  about 
the  matter  we  have  something  earlier  even  than  the 
gospels,  namely,  the  words  of  St.  Paul  as  contained 
in  I  Cor.  xv.  These  show  beyond  all  possibility 
of  doubt  that  primitive  Christian  belief  centred  on 
the  conviction  that  Jesus  was  alive  and  reigning 
in  the  world  unseen,  and  that  presently  He  would 
return  to  establish  His  dominion  over  the  kingdoms 
of  the  earth.  Surely  if  there  is  one  fact  well  authen- 
ticated in  history,  it  is  this  belief  in  the  risen  Jesus. 


THE    RISEN   CHRIST  I9 

But  the  modern  mind  balks  at  the  suggestion  of 
an  empty  tomb,  and  this  suggestion  is  with  most 
intelligent  people  held  to  be  the  chief  difficulty  in 
considering  the  question  to-day.  I  cannot  now 
pause  to  examine  the  evidence  with  any  pretence 
to  thoroughness,  but  I  would  point  out  that  in  my 
judgment  it  is  impossible  to  escape  the  conclusion 
that  the  primitive  Christians  did  believe  in  the  empty 
tomb  simply  because  they  had  no  conception  oj  an 
existence  apart  from  the  body.  I  do  not  think  many 
of  you  have  really  grasped  this  fact.  You  are  in- 
clined to  take  for  granted  that  our  present-day  view 
of  the  structure  of  the  universe,  and  the  separation 
of  the  spirit  from  the  body,  is  precisely  the  same  as 
that  of  the  ancient  world ;  but  it  is  not.  The  modem 
Western  mind  tends  to  draw  a  hard  and  fast  dis- 
tinction between  matter  and  spirit  which  did  not 
exist  in  the  minds  of  the  writers  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Let  me  show  you  what  I  mean,  for  I  think 
you  may  find  it  somewhat  interesting. 

I  dare  say  you  all  know  that  the  ancient  civilised 
world  was  rather  small.  Leaving  out  the  Far  East, 
which  had  a  civilisation  of  its  own,  and  was  hardly 
known  to  the  West,  we  may  say  that  the  whole  world 
of  thought  and  action  as  known  to  the  men  of  the 
New  Testament  lay  around  the  Mediterranean  Sea. 
Now  try  to  picture  the  way  in  which  the  people  of 
that  day  must  have  thought  about  the  universe. 
Remember,  they  knew  nothing  about  the  vast  inter- 
stellar systems  in  which  our  earth  is  only  as  a  speck 


20  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

of  dust.  To  them  heaven  was  quite  near,  just  above 
the  sky;  and  they  did  not  think  of  the  sky  as  being 
much  farther  away  than  an  arrow  could  shoot.  It 
is  difficult  now  for  us  to  reahse  this,  but  so  it  was. 
They  thought  of  heaven  as  a  bright  and  glorious 
abode,  a  mile  or  two  up  above  the  surface  of  the 
earth,  with  everything  in  it  just  as  real  and  concrete 
as  things  are  down  here.  To  pass  from  one  world 
to  the  other  did  not  mean  laying  aside  the  body; 
it  was  simply  a  transition  from  one  place  to  another, 
of  much  the  same  kind  as  getting  into  a  ship  and 
going  to  America  would  be  to  us  to-day.  I  do  not 
mean  that  all  men  were  supposed  to  go  up  into 
heaven  in  this  way,  but  it  was  believed  that  some 
had  done  so,  such  as  Enoch  and  Elijah.  But, 
whether  men  went  up  or  not,  it  was  believed  that 
heavenly  messengers  came  down,  and  the  bodies  of 
these  heavenly  messengers  were  supposed  to  be  just 
as  real  as  ours,  only  finer.  They  did  not  behave 
like  ghosts.  When  they  disappeared  they  just  went 
back  into  heaven  in  the  same  matter-of-fact  way  that 
we  shall  all  presently  rise  from  our  places  here  in 
church  and  go  home.  I  do  not  wish  you  to  under- 
stand that  this  is  what  all  the  philosophers  thought, 
as  well  as  the  common  people,  concerning  the  struc- 
ture of  the  universe  and  the  relation  of  matter  and 
spirit;  but,  broadly  speaking,  it  is  what  the  men  of 
the  New  Testament  thought,  and  I  am  not  prepared 
to  say  that  they  were  wholly  wrong.  I  think  perhaps 
our  modem   tendency  to   drive   a  wedge  between 


THE    RISEN    CHRIST  21 

matter  and  spirit  is  wider  of  the  mark  than  theirs. 
Our  universe  is  bigger  than  theirs,  thanks  to  the 
telescope,  and  that  is  the  most  that  we  can  say. 

But  what  I  want  you  now  to  see  is  that  such  a  view 
of  the  universe  naturally  made  the  primitive  Chris- 
tians attach  great  importance  to  the  idea  of  a  physical 
resurrection.  They  believed  that  when  men  died 
their  souls  went  down  into  Hades  instead  of  up  into 
heaven,  and  that  these  souls  were  helpless  until  they 
got  back  into  the  body  again;  they  could  hardly 
be  said  to  be  alive  at  all  apart  from  the  body.  The 
kind  of  heaven  to  which  they  looked  forward,  there- 
fore, was  the  restoration  of  the  soul  to  the  body. 
The  body  had  then  to  become  glorified  —  that  is, 
made  beautiful  —  and  endowed  with  immortality, 
like  the  angels  in  heaven.  Examine  Paul's  words 
closely,  for  instance,  and  you  will  find  this  view 
explicitly  stated  or  implied  all  the  way  through. 
What  the  Galilean  disciples  of  Jesus  expected  Him 
to  do  before  He  was  crucified  was  to  bring  about  an 
ideal  existence  on  earth.  Apparently  they  thought 
that  when  this  ideal  existence  came  no  one  would 
have  to  die  any  more.  When  He  died  Himself  — 
and  such  a  bloody  and  dreadful  death  too  —  they 
were  thoroughly  overwhelmed  with  despair.  Noth- 
ing could  have  seemed  a  more  complete  reversal 
of  their  hopes.  But  when  they  heard  that  He  had 
risen  again,  those  hopes  not  only  returned  with 
greater  intensity,  but  became  certainties.  It  is  no 
use  discussing  whether  they  believed  in  the  empty 


22  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

tomb  or  not.  From  what  I  have  already  said  it 
will,  I  trust,  be  clear  that  they  had  to  believe  in 
the  empty  tomb.  They  never  thought  of  any  other 
kind  of  resurrection,  for  they  never  thought  of 
Jesus  as  having  any  other  body  than  the  body  in 
which  He  was  crucified.  He  might  take  that  body 
up  into  heaven,  but,  according  to  their  belief,  He 
could  not  be  found  apart  from  it  outside  of  Hades. 
Their  view  of  the  whole  matter  was  as  simple  and 
child-like  as  their  belief  in  the  nearness  of  a  material 
heaven  just  above  the  sky.  When  Jesus  went  away 
from  them  again  they  believed  He  had  taken  that 
very  body  up  into  heaven,  where  it  was  glorified 
with  unearthly  beauty,  and  that  presently  He  would 
come  back  again  with  great  power  and  splendour 
to  make  a  similar  heaven  on  earth.  You  can  see 
from  this  why  they  talked  so  httle  about  going  to 
heaven  themselves,  and  what  they  meant  by  heaven 
coming  down.  There  is  no  more  beautiful  passage 
in  the  whole  of  sacred  literature  than  the  beginning 
of  Revelation  xxi.  The  reference  to  death  in  this 
passage  means  exactly  what  it  says.  The  Christians 
expected  that  when  Jesus  came  again  on  the  clouds 
of  heaven  He  would  come  to  call  them  all  from  their 
graves  to  reign  with  Him  for  ever  in  glorified  bodies 
on  earth.  Belief  in  His  resurrection  was  therefore 
the  starting-point  of  their  faith.  What  He  had  done 
they  would  do  through  His  power.  Whatever  theory 
of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  we  may  hold  to-day,  it 
is  quite  clear  that  the  words  of  our  text  meant  orig- 


THE   RISEN   CHRIST 


23 


inally  exactly  what  they  said:  "He  is  not  here,  for 
He  is  risen,  as  He  said.  Come,  see  the  place  where 
the  Lord  lay."  Whatever  else  these  first  Christians 
believed,  they  unquestionably  believed  in  the  empty 
tomb,  and  their  whole  theory  of  the  nature  of  the 
universe  was  the  principal  cause  of  their  doing  so. 
But  let  me  state  here  with  perfect  frankness  that  I 
feel  convinced  they  must  have  had  some  further 
cause  for  doing  so.  They  really  must  have  seen 
Jesus.  I  do  not  care  in  what  way  you  try  to  account 
for  their  belief.  You  may  hold  that  they  saw  a 
spirit,  or  that  they  were  subject  to  hallucination, 
but  it  is  hardly  possible  for  any  one  to  deny  that  these 
simple  men  and  women  were  firmly  convinced  that 
they  had  seen  Jesus  Himself.  Now  it  is  unreason- 
able to  suppose  that  any  great  moral  movement, 
accompanied  by  such  exaltation  of  feeling,  such 
spiritual  enthusiasm  and  unselfishness  of  purpose, 
as  Christianity  undoubtedly  was,  could  have  started 
from  a  delusion.  You  may  believe  that  the  dust 
of  Jesus  still  lies  in  some  underground,  rock-hewn 
cavern  outside  Jerusalem: 

And  on  His  grave  with  shining  eyes 
The  Syrian  stars  look  down; 

but  you  cannot  get  away  from  the  fact  that  some 
overpowering  revolution  must  have  taken  place  in 
order  to  give  the  first  momentum  to  the  great  moral 
uplift  which  the  Christian  religion  has  since  pro- 
duced in  the  world.     I  have  before  now  given  what 


24  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

I  think  to  be  the  most  reasonable  explanation  of  the 
facts,  and  I  need  not  repeat  it  here;  but,  whether 
that  explanation  be  the  true  one  or  not,  it  is  as  certain 
as  anything  can  be  that  the  humble  heroes  who  first 
proclaimed  the  gospel  of  Jesus  to  mankind  were 
justified  in  declaring  that  they  had  received  their 
commission  from  His  own  lips  after  cruel  priests 
and  ignorant  fanatics  believed  that  they  had  silenced 
Him  for  ever.  I  believe  they  were  right.  Nothing 
less  can  explain  what  they  did  then,  or  what  the 
name  of  Jesus  is  still  doing  even  now. 

But  there  is  something  more  to  be  said  than  even 
this.  You  can  see  for  yourselves  that  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  body  of  Jesus  is  only  an  external  fact, 
and  that  the  whole  theory  of  the  universe  with  which 
the  first  Christians  started  their  preaching  has  had 
to  give  way  to  a  larger ;  but  the  spiritual  experience 
of  the  men  who  first  preached  Jesus  was  an  experience 
of  the  risen  Christ  which  holds  good  now,  and  is  the 
very  life-blood  of  our  relationship  to  the  eternal 
truth.  It  was  the  rising  of  Christ  in  a  few  simple 
Galilean  fishermen  that  made  the  best  in  modem 
civilisation  possible,  and  it  is  the  rising  of  that  same 
Christ  in  brave  and  faithful  men  and  women  now 
which  is  filling  the  world  with  a  great  hope  for  the 
dawning  of  a  better  day.  By  the  word  Christ,  as 
you  know,  I  mean  not  only  Jesus  but  the  spirit  of 
Jesus,  the  true  or  ideal  humanity  in  every  human 
soul.  You  cannot  beheve  too  strongly  in  the  rising 
of  that  Christ  in  the  human  heart  to-day.     I  think 


THE    RISEN    CHRIST  25 

every  true  man  must  believe  it,  whether  he  pauses 
to  give  it  doctrinal  form  or  not.  It  is  "the  one  cen- 
tral hope  for  our  poor  wayward  race."  What  the 
world  needs  in  order  to  be  delivered  from  all  the 
things  that  are  holding  it  in  bondage  is  the  resur- 
rection of  Christ  in  every  man.  We  believe  to-day 
essentially  what  the  first  Christians  believed  about 
the  need  for  the  City  of  God,  the  heaven  on  earth. 
We  want  exactly  the  same  thing  as  they  wanted, 
although  history  has  now  taught  us  that  it  will  not 
come  like  a  thunderclap.  We  know  that  the  only 
way  in  which  it  can  come  is  by  making  every  man 
a  Christ.  Let  Christ  rise  in  victory  over  all  the 
forces  of  harm  and  hate,  and  this  world  would  be 
heaven,  for  heaven  is  only  the  perfect  expression  of 
eternal  love.  Is  it  not  beautifully  simple?  And 
can  you  not  feel  that  it  is  grandly  true  ?  Jesus  Hved 
and  died  for  it,  and  those  who  love  and  believe  in 
Him  must  go  on  doing  the  same  until  the  world  is 
filled  with  all  the  fullness  of  God. 

It  is  not  much  use  speculating  as  to  what  the  final 
result  will  be  when  that  day  comes,  but  the  question 
is  at  least  worth  asking.  I  dare  say  many  people 
wonder  what  the  end  of  the  world  will  be  when  every 
enemy  has  been  destroyed  except  death.  Try  to 
picture  such  a  world,  and  to  believe  that  it  is  certain 
to  come.  Think  of  a  world  with  no  poverty  in  it; 
no  war,  either  between  nation  and  nation,  or  between 
man  and  man ;  no  ill-will ;  no  deceit ;  no  selfishness ; 
no  desire  to  cause  pain.     Just  imagine  a  world  with 


26  NEW  THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

all  the  things  taken  out  of  it  that  made  you  fret  and 
worry  yesterday  or  will  make  people  sad  and  weary 
to-morrow.  Try  to  realise  a  world  in  which  no 
one  would  ever  seek  to  get  the  better  of  any  one  else, 
but  in  which  every  one  would  do  the  best  he  could 
for  all,  and  the  weakest  would  receive  the  tenderest 
and  most  considerate  treatment  from  the  rest. 
Why,  such  a  world  would  be  heaven  itself  save  for 
one  thing.  There  would  only  be  one  kind  of  sorrow 
left,  and  that  would  be  the  sorrow  caused  by  the 
death  of  our  loved  ones.  Shall  we  ever  get  free 
from  that?  Yes,  I  think  we  shall.  "The  last 
enemy  that  shall  be  destroyed  is  death."  I  believe 
the  early  Christians  were  so  far  right  that  their 
belief  in  the  glorified  body  represents  a  truth  which 
the  world  will  some  day  come  to  see  to  be  a  fact. 
I  believe  the  day  will  come  when  men  will  recognise 
the  universe  to  be  wholly  spiritual.  The  veil  which 
separates  seen  from  unseen  will  be  taken  away,  and 
mortality  shall  be  swallowed  up  of  hfe.  At  present 
this  is  so  remote  that  it  is  not  much  use  dwelling 
upon  it,  but  I  have  httle  doubt  it  is  the  truth.  As 
soon  as  this  world  has  become  the  expression  of  per- 
fect and  eternal  love  the  so-called  material  will 
melt  into  the  spiritual,  and  death  will  be  no  more. 
This  New  Testament  idea  is  based  upon  a  percep- 
tion which  I  feel  must  be  the  fundamental  truth 
about  the  universe  of  God. 

Now  let  me  try  to  show  you  the  way  in  which  you 
and  I  stand  related  to  this  truth.     Remember  that 


THE   RISEN   CHRIST  27 

the  one  great  thing  demonstrated  by  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus  was  that  evil  has  no  power  to  harm  a  child 
of  God.  It  may  make  him  suffer  for  a  little  while, 
but  it  can  do  nothing  to  diminish  the  moral  power 
of  his  hfe.  In  so  far  as  your  hfe  is  a  manifestation 
of  the  spirit  of  Christ  it  will  rise  triumphant  over 
cross  and  tomb.  I  want  you  to  recognise  that  this 
experience  is  not  merely  like  something  in  the  ex- 
perience of  Jesus,  it  is  a  part  of  it.  In  our  text  an 
angel  of  light  is  represented  as  saying  to  a  sorrowing 
woman:  "Come,  see  the  place  where  the  Lord  lay, 
and  you  will  find  He  is  not  there  now;  nothing 
earthly  has  power  to  keep  Him  there."  Now  if  you 
will  look  at  the  life  of  any  noble  man,  you  will  see 
a  manifestation  of  exactly  the  same  principle,  the 
rising  of  the  Christ  from  the  tomb  in  which  ignorance 
and  wickedness  have  thought  He  was  buried  for 
ever.  Take  a  case  in  point.  John  Huss  was  granted 
a  safe  conduct  to  the  Council  of  Constance,  and 
was  there  basely  arrested  and  put  to  death.  Those 
who  did  this  wicked  thing  attempted  to  justify 
themselves  on  the  ground  that  no  faith  ought  to  be 
kept  with  a  heretic.  The  lie  seemed  triumphant 
for  the  moment;  the  spirit  of  hell  prevailed  for  a 
brief  hour;  the  poor  tortured  body  of  John  Huss 
did  not  rise  again.  But  something  rose;  and  I 
think  you  can  all  tell  me  what  it  was.  It  was  the 
spirit  of  the  truth  that  works  by  love,  the  spirit 
of  Christ  magnified  in  His  suffering  servant.  If 
history  had  not  produced  such  men  as  Huss,  we 


28  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

should  still  be  in  the  dark  ages.  You  must  not 
imagine  that  things  come  right  by  a  sort  of  magic, 
automatically  as  it  were.  No,  no;  every  moral 
advance  has  to  be  paid  for  in  agony  and  bloody 
sweat;  Christ  is  crucified  before  He  can  rise  in 
power.  Somehow  I  do  not  wish  to  have  it  otherwise, 
and  pity  seems  out  of  place  when  we  think  of  men 
like  John  Huss  to  whom  the  world  owes  so  great  a 
debt.  For  in  reality  these  are  the  strong  ones  of 
the  earth,  and  their  murderers  are  the  weak.  From 
the  higher  side  of  the  great  change  called  death  such 
as  these  can  look  down  on  their  own  achievements, 
and  praise  God  for  the  privilege  of  being  called 
to  bear  a  part  in  the  work  of  redeeming  mankind 
from  the  power  of  ignorance  and  sin.  They  can 
mark  the  place  where  they  were  laid  in  ignominy 
and  seeming  failure ;  but  they  are  not  there  now  — 
they  have  risen.  Yes,  they  have  risen  even  on 
earth,  for  all  they  once  stood  for  has  triumphed  now, 
and  Christ  is  glorified  in  them.  Let  me  put  it  to 
you  thus?  Would  you  not  rather  be  John  Huss 
than  president  of  the  council  that  condemned  him? 
President  and  council  belong  to  the  midnight  of 
the  past;   Huss  is  a  son  of  the  morning. 

Take  this  lesson  home  to  your  own  souls,  for  you 
will  have  some  chance  of  putting  it  into  practice 
before  the  week  is  out.  If  ever  any  of  you  young 
men  feel  tempted  to  take  the  side  of  the  strong  against 
the  weak,  forbear !  Things  are  not  what  they  seem. 
Weakness  in  union  with  love  and  loyalty  to  truth  is 


THE    RISEN    CHRIST  29 

strength,  although  the  world  may  not  know  it  for 
the  moment.  Never  play  the  coward's  part;  you 
would  never  dream  of  doing  so  if  you  could  see  hfe 
as  it  really  is.  Believe  me,  the  highest  is  not  only 
the  true  but  the  strong;  and  you  will  be  held  to 
account  for  whatever  use  you  make  of  the  vision 
God  grants  you.  No  man  is  altogether  without  such 
a  vision.  You  know  quite  well,  from  day  to  day 
and  from  hour  to  hour,  what  as  a  true  man  you 
ought  to  do  and  say.  Do  it,  and  leave  the  conse- 
quences to  God.  This  is  the  way  in  which  Christ 
comes  to  a  needy  world  and  strikes  away  its  chains. 
There  is  no  other  way.  All  that  God  is  doing  for 
the  world  to-day  is  being  done  through  the  Christ- 
hood  of  His  children.  They  may  be  crucified  in 
shame  and  buried  in  failure,  but  no  tomb  can  hold 
them  long.  The  world  can  point  to  the  place  where 
they  lay,  but  they  are  not  there  —  they  have  risen. 
Those  of  you  who  went  with  me  to  Oxford  some 
time  ago  will  perhaps  remember  the  stone  cross 
sunk  in  the  road  opposite  Balliol  College.  That 
cross  marks  the  spot  where  Christ  suffered  in 
Cranmer,  Ridley,  and  Latimer,  the  spot  where  their 
ashes  lay  in  ignominy.  Such  an  execution  would  be 
impossible  in  England  to-day.  Why?  Because  of 
the  triumph  of  that  for  which  these  men  suffered 
death,  namely,  liberty  of  conscience.  But  the  Christ 
of  Cranmer  is  not  in  that  stone  cross;  he  has  risen 
in  the  heart  in  England,  in  the  larger  sense  of  justice 
and  tenderness,  and  susceptibihty  to  all  that  makes 


30  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

for  nobler  life  and  joy.     "He  is  not  here;    He  is 
risen.     Come,  see  the  place  where  the  Lord  lay." 

Remember  this  the  next  time  you  hear  evil  shriek 
in  triumph  over  good.  Never  mind  appearances 
—  no,  not  even  when  you  yourself  are  the  sufferer. 
Nothing  can  hurt  you  unless  it  finds  an  ally  within 
yourself.  If  Christ  has  risen  in  you  He  will  rise 
in  all  you  have  to  do  for  Him.  As  you  gaze  upon 
the  tomb  of  buried  hopes,  say  to  yourself,  "He  is 
not  there;  He  is  risen;  that  is  only  where  He  was 
laid  yesterday.  To-day,  to-morrow,  and  to  all 
eternity  He  lives  and  reigns." 


THE   RESURRECTION    POWER 

"Declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power,  accord- 
ing to  the  spirit  of  holiness,  by  the  resurrection  from 
the  dead."  — Rom.  i.  4. 

This  remarkable  phrase,  coming  as  it  does  at  the 
beginning  of  St.  Paul's  most  doctrinal  epistle,  is  evi- 
dently meant  as  a  statement  of  foundation  truth.  It 
embodies  the  most  of  what  the  Apostle  has  to  write 
and  preach  about,  and,  rightly  understood,  supplies 
the  key  to  his  whole  gospel.  Before  going  any 
farther,  therefore,  in  our  examination  of  its  meaning, 
let  us  be  quite  sure  that  we  understand  the  terms  em- 
ployed in  it.  Almost  every  word  and  phrase  in  the 
text  requires  a  brief  examination.  Let  us  take  them 
seriatim.  It  is  always  important  to  make  sure  of 
the  meaning  of  the  terms  we  employ  in  our  ordinary 
speech.  I  am  afraid  few  people  are  sufficiently 
careful  about  that,  and  most  of  the  confusion  of 
thought  that  arises,  either  in  religion  or  anything 
else,  is  due  to  our  inability  to  pay  cash  for  the  terms 
we  employ.  Let  us  be  sure  that  we  can  do  it  in  this 
instance. 

The  first  word  is  "declared."  This  word  means 
designated,  or  ordained,  or  shown  forth.  The 
phrase  "with  power"  should  be  taken  along  with 

31 


32  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

it  in  order  to  complete  the  sense  —  "declared  with 
power  to  be  the  Son  of  God." 

The  title  "Son  of  God"  should  not  need  much 
explanation,  but  perhaps  it  ought  to  be  pointed  out 
that  among  the  Jews  it  was  used  as  a  description  of 
the  Messiah,  and  did  not  necessarily  denote  a  divine 
being.  In  this  Messianic  sense  Jesus  was  declared 
to  be  the  Son  of  God  at  several  special  crises  of  His 
life  and  work,  such  as  the  Baptism,  according  to 
Matthew's  account;  again,  at  Peter's  confession 
of  Him ;  again,  at  the  Transfiguration ;  and,  lastly, 
at  the  Resurrection. 

"According  to  the  spirit  of  holiness."  This 
should  not  be  taken  to  mean  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
apart  from  Jesus  Himself  declared  Him  to  be  the 
Son  of  God.  It  means  that  the  spirit  of  holiness, 
plainly  evident  in  the  character  of  Jesus,  was  also 
the  spirit  of  power.  That  is  all  it  means.  It  is 
Jesus'  own  spirit  that  is  in  question,  much  as  we 
might  think  of  the  mind  or  spirit  shown  by  any 
one  of  our  acquaintances  in  the  ordinary  walk 
of  life.  We  might  remark,  for  instance,  that  the 
present  Lord  Mayor  of  London  is  showing  a  beauti- 
ful spirit  in  his  care  for  crippled  children.  It  is  in 
a  somewhat  similar  sense  that  the  phrase  "according 
to  the  spirit  of  holiness"  is  employed  in  our  text 
as  descriptive  of  Jesus. 

Lastly,  "By  the  resurrection  from  the  dead." 
This  translation  is  not  quite  accurate;  it  ought 
rather  to    be  "By  the    resurrection    0}  the  dead." 


THE    RESURRECTION   POWER  33 

The  difference  is  not  unimportant,  for  the  change 
of  preposition  enlarges  the  meaning  of  the  whole 
passage,  as  we  shall  presently  see.  As  the  text 
stands  it  seems  to  be  a  statement  to  the  effect  that 
the  Divine  Sonship  of  Jesus  was  demonstrated 
beyond  dispute  by  the  fact  that,  quickened  by  the 
Holy  Spirit,  He  arose  from  the  tomb  in  which  He 
had  been  laid  after  His  death  on  Calvary.  That 
is  what  it  seems  to  say  on  the  face  of  it,  but  I  think 
we  shall  see  reason  to  believe  that  this  is  not  the 
whole,  nor  even  the  principal  part,  of  the  truth 
which  the  Apostle  seeks  to  convey  to  his  readers. 

Now  that  we  are  possessed  of  a  fairly  accurate 
apprehension  of  the  value  of  the  terms  employed 
in  this  passage,  let  us  proceed  to  scrutinise  the  gen- 
eral statement  a  little  more  closely.  I  think  we 
shall  find  something  here  that  bears  immediately 
and  helpfully  upon  our  everyday  concerns.  To 
begin  with,  what  is  it  that  has  given  the  name  of 
Jesus  the  power  over  human  hearts  which  it  pos- 
sesses to-day?  When  He  was  put  to  death  on 
Calvary  every  one,  friend  and  foe  ahke,  seemed  to 
have  thought  that  there  was  an  end  of  Him.  Not 
only  were  they  mistaken,  but  the  very  cross  on  which 
He  died  has  become  the  symbol  of  His  victory. 
No  matter  what  we  may  think  of  the  personality  of 
Jesus,  there  is  no  denying  these  facts ;  the  strongest 
Christian  and  the  blankest  atheist  would  agree  about 
them.  His  influence  is  now  greater  than  it  ever  was. 
Why  so  ?     What  has  made  it  possible  ?    I  think  you 


34  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

will  find  that  our  text  gives  us  the  answer  in  a  fairly 
small  compass.  In  the  first  place,  the  disciples  of 
Jesus  somehow  became  convinced  that  He  was  not 
really  dead,  but  alive  and  reigning  in  the  world 
unseen,  interested  as  much  as  ever  in  the  work  His 
followers  were  doing,  and  helping  them  in  the  doing 
of  it.  I  need  not  discuss  the  question  of  the  physi- 
cal resurrection.  Some  people  think  that  the  very 
existence  of  Christianity  depends  upon  whether  the 
body  of  Jesus  rose  from  the  tomb  or  not,  while 
others  are  repelled  by  the  suggestion  that  it  did. 
I  have  previously  given  you  my  own  views  on  the 
subject,  and  I  cannot  afford  the  time  to  re-discuss 
them  now.  I  would  merely  point  out  that  the  per- 
sonal followers  of  Jesus  became  absolutely  convinced 
that  they  had  seen  their  Master  face  to  face,  spoken 
to  Him,  and  heard  Him  speak,  after  the  world  was 
convinced  that  He  was  both  dead  and  buried.  This 
conviction  had  immediate  and  important  spiritual 
results.  It  gave  these  simple  men  a  new  and  greater 
confidence  in  Jesus  and  in  the  meaning  of  His  life 
than  they  had  possessed  before.  They  saw  that 
that  life  was,  after  all,  the  strongest  thing  in  the 
universe ;  they  realised  that  in  the  end  nothing  could 
contend  against  it.  Evil  could  do  it  no  real  harm, 
because  God  was  behind  it.  Even  before  His  cruci- 
fixion they  had  looked  upon  Jesus  as  the  Son  of 
God  in  a  higher  sense  than  tlmt  title  had  ever  been 
used  of  any  one  before.  But  now  henceforth  they 
thought  of  Him  in  a  higher  way  still.     To  them  He 


THE   RESURRECTION   POWER  35 

was  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power 
because  of  His  victory  over  evil  and  death. 

Try  to  put  yourselves  in  their  place,  and  you  will 
realise  better  the  meaning  of  this  aspect  of  my  text. 
Suppose,  then,  that  you  had  known  Jesus  in  the 
flesh,  and  that  you  had  learned  to  understand  a 
Httle  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  beauty  of  the  life 
He  Hved;  suppose  that  you  knew  just  as  much 
about  Him  as  Peter,  James,  John,  and  the  other 
disciples  did  while  He  was  alive  in  the  flesh ;  suppose 
that  you  had  seen  Him  die  in  blood  and  shame; 
I  think  it  would  have  taken  a  good  deal  to  convince 
you  that  evil  was  not  master.  Now,  suppose  that 
after  this  you  had  absolute  proof  —  I  will  not  say 
how  —  that  your  Master,  whom  you  had  mourned 
as  dead,  was  still  alive,  and  that  His  spirit  was  with 
you  and  helping  you,  would  it  not  make  a  very  great 
difference  in  your  life  ?  You  could  not  but  feel  the 
littleness  of  the  power  that  had  tried  to  destroy  Him 
and  thought  it  had  done  so,  and  you  would  not  be 
afraid  of  it  any  more. 

This,  of  course,  is  not  the  only  reason  for  the  in- 
fluence of  Jesus  in  the  world,  as  St.  Paul  knew  per- 
fectly well  when  he  wrote  my  text.  The  rehgion 
of  Jesus  does  not  depend  upon  physical  marvels, 
but  upon  moral  and  spiritual  values.  Surely  no 
one  would  maintain  that  the  spiritual  power  of 
Christianity  in  the  world  to-day  is  dependent  only 
upon  belief  in  the  empty  tomb  in  the  literal,  physical 
sense.     If  it  were  so,  then  belief  in  prodigies  of  a 


36  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

similar  kind  ought  to  have  produced  similar  results, 
but  they  have  not  done  so.  For  instance,  there  was 
a  persistent  Christian  tradition  in  the  early  cen- 
turies —  it  may  be  held  in  some  quarters  now,  for 
anything  I  know  —  that  Mary  the  mother  of  Jesus 
rose  from  the  grave  and  ascended  to  heaven,  some- 
what after  the  fashion  of  her  Divine  Son.  A  few 
days  after  she  was  buried,  so  the  legend  runs,  the 
tomb  was  found  to  be  empty,  with  only  a  sweet  aroma 
to  mark  the  sacred  place  where  the  precious  body 
of  the  mother  of  the  Lord  had  lain.  A  similar  story 
is  told  about  the  Apostle  John.  And  then  look  at 
the  bewildering  number  of  popular  behefs  concern- 
ing the  wonders  wrought  by  the  physical  remains 
of  saints  and  martyrs.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  Refor- 
mation, to  take  only  one  example,  pilgrimages  of 
all  sorts  were  made  to  the  tomb  of  Thomas  a  Becket 
at  Canterbury.  The  tomb  is  there  still,  only  no 
one  troubles  about  it  now.  Readers  of  Chaucer's 
"Canterbury  Tales"  will  not  need  to  be  reminded 
that  for  centuries  popular  belief  in  the  miracles 
wrought  at  the  tomb  of  Thomas  a  Becket  was  as 
strong  as  anything  could  well  be.  That  superstition 
is  now  dead,  and  along  with  it  has  perished  the  belief 
in  the  superior  sanctity  of  the  martyr  himself. 
History  has  thrown  a  clearer  light  upon  his  char- 
acter and  achievements,  and  we  recognise  that  this 
popular  saint  was  after  all  an  obstinate,  self-willed, 
impossible  kind  of  person,  who  must  have  been  a 
perfect  nuisance  to  poor  King  Henry  and  his  Govern- 


THE   RESURRECTION    POWER  37 

ment.  The  case  is  quite  different  with  Jesus,  just 
because  Jesus  Himself  was  different  from  such  saints 
as  these.  It  was  the  spirit  of  holiness  in  Jesus  that 
proved  to  be  the  true  power  over  the  hearts  and  lives 
of  His  immediate  followers.  Can  you  picture  to 
yourselves  the  effect  which  the  discovery  of  this  fact 
must  have  had  over  the  minds  of  those  who  first 
realised  that  their  Master  was  alive,  and  also  that 
He  was  not  only  alive,  but  backed  by  the  whole 
universe  of  God?  "All  power  is  given  unto  Me 
in  heaven  and  in  earth.  Go  ye,  therefore,  and  teach 
all  nations."  To  me  the  most  valuable  thing  about 
primitive  Christian  belief  in  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus  is  the  demonstration  of  the  truth  that  nothing 
that  is  of  God  can  ever  perish.  However  it  was  put 
into  the  minds  of  the  primitive  disciples  of  Jesus, 
that  is  the  truth  that  really  matters.  The  spirit 
of  perfect  unselfishness,  the  spirit  of  holiness,  the 
spirit  of  nobleness,  the  spirit  of  love,  the  spirit  of 
self-devotion  to  the  ideal  good,  the  spirit  of  universal 
brotherhood,  the  spirit  of  justice  and  truth  in  all 
human  relations  —  that  spirit  is  always  sure  of  a 
triumphant  resurrection,  no  matter  how  stem  and 
terrible  its  Calvary  may  have  been. 

But  there  is  a  further  reason  still  for  the  power 
of  the  name  of  Jesus  over  the  minds  of  men,  and 
that  is  that  the  resurrection  here  spoken  of  is  one 
which  is  continually  repeated  in  the  experience  of 
the  sons  of  God.  I  remarked  at  the  beginning  of 
this  sermon  that  the  phrase  in  our  text,  "the  resur- 


38  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

rection  }ro7n  the  dead,"  should  read  "the  resurrection 
0}  the  dead."  This  thought  is  quite  characteristic 
of  St.  Paul.  To  him  the  resurrection  is  a  rising  up, 
an  issuing  forth,  a  going  forward,  rather  than  a 
coming  back.  He  thinks  that  the  best  kind  of 
resurrection  is  the  uprising  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  in 
individual  experience.  Take  any  one  of  St.  Paul's 
letters  where  he  mentions  the  resurrection  as  being 
a  powTr  in  the  life  of  the  individual  Christian,  and 
you  will  see  that  that  is  the  meaning.  "Awake, 
thou  that  sleepest,  and  arise  from  the  dead,  and 
Christ  shall  give  thee  light."  He  thinks  of  the  spirit- 
ual resurrection  as  going  on  without  ceasing  in  the 
hearts  of  men.  He  believes,  therefore,  that  the 
greatest  evidence  of  the  Divine  Sonship  of  Jesus 
consists  in  the  fact  that  He  had  been  the  means  of 
awakening  others  to  the  truth  His  Hfe  was  the  means 
of  declaring.  He  has  raised  us  from  the  sleep  of 
selfishness  and  moral  apathy,  and  quickened  us 
with  the  spirit  of  truth  and  love.  I  think  we  should 
all  agree  with  Paul  that  this  is  the  best  of  all  the 
credentials  of  Jesus,  and  the  one  which  most  entitles 
Him  to  the  gratitude  and  reverence  of  mankind. 
He  is  "declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power," 
because  His  spirit,  working  in  human  experience, 
has  been  the  means  of  raising  so  many  of  us  from 
the  dead. 

But  there  is  another  sense  in  which  these  words  can 
be  explained  —  a  sense  in  which  they  come  even 
closer  to  our  individual  experience.     I  think,  with- 


THE   RESURRECTION   POWER  39 

out  doing  violence  to  the  thought  of  St,  Paul,  we 
can  discern  an  even  deeper  truth  behind  these  words. 
It  is  that  of  the  divine  sonship  of  every  soul  of  man. 
Now,  although  St.  Paul  is  speaking  primarily  of 
Jesus,  one  cannot  but  feel  that  he  has  this  further 
thought  present  to  his  mind ;  in  fact,  it  is  that  which 
to  him  lends  significance  to  the  very  work  of  Jesus. 
Wliat  did  it  matter  to  believe  that  Jesus  rose  from 
the  dead  unless  it  were  going  to  effect  something 
in  the  lives  of  the  men  and  women  who  believed  it? 
What  would  it  matter  that  Jesus  lived  the  life  He 
did  amongst  the  sons  of  men  if  it  were  to  have  no 
effect  upon  other  lives  than  His  own?  The  real 
thing  that  matters  here,  and  which  gives  significance 
to  the  work  of  Jesus,  is  that  He  believed  it  to  be 
possible  to  quicken  and  arouse  in  others  the  ex- 
perience of  sonship  to  God.  It  is  therefore  of  that 
divine  sonship  that  I  wish  to  speak  —  the  sonship 
of  every  soul  of  man. 

In  order  to  attempt  to  show  you  precisely  what  I 
mean,  let  me  give  you  an  illustration  drawn  from 
present-day  life,  given  to  me  by  one  of  our  deacons 
the  other  day.  I  dare  say  you  have  all  heard  of  the 
Sunday  morning  adult  schools  which  are  held  in 
various  parts  of  the  country.  These  schools  are 
attended  for  the  most  part  by  working  men  who  desire 
to  employ  a  portion  of  their  rest  day  in  improving 
their  general  education  and  in  listening  to  addresses 
on  subjects  of  intellectual  or  moral  interest.  Some 
time  ago  a  man  of  drunken  habits  was  led  to  attach 


40  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

himself  to  the  movement  in  the  following  way. 
One  of  his  mates  had  often  asked  him  to  attend  the 
Sunday  morning  adult  school,  but  he  had  always 
scornfully  refused.  One  Bank  Holiday,  however, 
being  short  of  money,  and  happening  to  meet  this 
fellow-workman,  he  accosted  him  somewhat  in 
this  wise:  "Mate,  I  am  not  properly  drunk  yet,  for 
I  have  not  enough  money;  if  you  will  lend  me  a 
shilling  to  complete  the  process  I  will  come  with 
you  to  the  adult  school  next  Sunday  morning." 
His  mate  consented,  the  curious  bargain  was  struck, 
and  no  doubt  the  money  was  spent  in  the  way  in- 
dicated by  the  speaker.  On  Sunday  morning  the 
giver  of  the  shilling  came  round  like  a  recruiting 
sergeant  to  claim  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise. 
With  some  difficulty  the  drunkard  was  got  out  of 
bed  and  taken  to  the  place  of  worship  where  the 
school  was  held.  There  he  was  profoundly  im- 
pressed with  the  higher  aims  and  ideals  of  his  fellows, 
most  of  whom  he  already  knew,  and  by  whose  side 
he  worked  day  by  day.  So  he  determined  to  sum- 
mon his  own  manhood  and  break  free  from  the  habit 
that  enchained  him.  That  was  more  easily  said 
than  done;  but  that  man  has  since  developed,  I 
am  told,  into  a  strong  character,  helpful,  earnest, 
and  sincere,  so  much  so  that  it  would  be  difficult 
to  recognise  him  for  the  same  person.  Few  im- 
agined that  he  had  it  in  him  to  become  the  man  he 
is  to-day.  What  has  wrought  the  change?  Re- 
member, this  is  a  case  of  genuine  conversion  in  the 


THE   RESURRECTION   POWER  41 

best  sense,  but  without  any  emotional  accompani- 
ments whatever,  and  certainly  without  any  profes- 
sion of  belief  in  this  or  that  doctrine  or  theory  of 
salvation.  And  yet  there  has  been  a  resurrection 
somehow.  This  man  has  passed  from  death  unto 
life ;  he  is  a  new  man ;  where  formerly  he  was  weak, 
now  he  is  strong ;  where  formerly  he  was  blind  as  to 
the  meaning  of  life,  now  he  can  see.  I  think  I  can 
tell  you  what  it  is.  First,  Christ  came  to  him  in  his 
mate,  the  man  who  lent  him  the  shilling,  and  others 
who  for  a  time  encouraged  him  in  his  efforts  after 
a  higher  and  purer  life,  and  helped  him  past  the 
public-houses.  My  informant  tells  me  that  some 
of  these  men  were  accustomed  to  go  home  with  their 
comrade  night  after  night  for  a  long  time,  just  to 
get  him  past  the  pubhc-house  door.  They  never 
badgered  or  bothered  him  about  believing  or  dis- 
beheving  anything;  they  simply  told  him  that  they 
felt  God  was  with  them  in  their  efforts  to  rise.  This 
was  the  first  thing.  These  manly  fellows  came  to 
this  drunken  man  just  as  Jesus  came  to  the  world. 
They  showed  him  the  strong  life,  and  they  made  him 
feel  that  it  was  possible  to  live  it.  They  were  sons 
of  God  in  the  sense  declared  in  i  John  iii. :  "Be- 
loved, now  are  we  sons  of  God,  and  it  doth  not  yet 
appear  what  we  shall  be."  But  another  thing  had 
to  follow :  this  man  had  to  be  made  to  feel  that  that 
same  potency  was  in  him  too;  he  too  could  be  a 
man,  he  too  could  manifest  the  Christ.  It  was  not 
that  something  needed  to  be  put  into  him  so  much 


42  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

as  that  something  needed  to  be  drawn  out  of  him 
—  something  that  had  been  buried  and  concealed 
by  his  vicious  habits.  If  God  is  with  these  others, 
he  said  to  himself,  God  must  be  with  me  too.  This 
became  his  act  of  faith,  and  from  that  act  of  faith 
everything  else  followed.  He  drew  upon  his  hidden 
divine  resources  and  became  a  new  man:  he  was 
declared  to  be  a  son  of  God  with  power,  according 
to  the  spirit  of  holiness,  by  the  resurrection  from  the 
dead. 

I  have  purposely  chosen  the  simplest  example  I 
could  think  of  to  illustrate  the  meaning  of  my  text. 
There  it  is;  there  is  no  gainsaying  it,  and  there  is 
no  magic  or  mystery  about  it.  Real,  living  faith 
in  Jesus  becomes  of  necessity  a  driving  power,  faith 
in  the  possibilities  of  our  own  divine  nature.  As 
Henry  Drummond  once  put  it,  all  nature  is  on  the 
side  of  the  man  who  tries  to  rise.  The  great  teacher 
was  no  doubt  speaking  by  analogy  to  illustrate  his 
view  of  a  spiritual  truth,  but  the  analogy  holds  per- 
fectly good.  In  one  corner  of  my  garden  there  is 
a  rubbish-heap;  it  is  away  out  of  sight,  because  it 
is  not  pleasant  to  look  at.  Yet  more  than  once 
in  that  rubbish-heap  I  have  seen  a  beautiful  flower 
spring  up  and  bloom ;  some  hyacinth  bulb  or  rose  tree 
root  which  has  been  thrown  there  by  mistake  will 
rise  out  of  the  midst  of  the  decay  into  fresh  and 
beautiful  life.  The  true  nature  of  bulb  or  root  is 
proved  by  this  resurrection.  There  could  be  no 
flower  if  there  were  no  capacity  for  the  flower.     So 


THE    RESURRECTION   POWER  43 

it  is  with  the  children  of  the  All-Father  in  this  strange, 
bewildering  world  of  ours.  Despair  of  none :  God 
indwells  all;  at  the  worst  and  darkest  it  is  still 
possible  for  the  Divine  sonship  to  arise  in  power. 

But  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  this  spiritual 
resurrection,  this  uprising  of  the  Divine  Son  in 
human  experience,  always  means  a  Calvary  of  some 
kind.  The  demonstration  of  Divine  manhood  in 
spirit  and  power  means  that  something  has  to  be 
overcome,  and  that  in  the  overcoming  itself  is  God 
manifested  and  glorified  in  mankind.  This  is  true 
of  Saviour  and  sinner  alike.  That  it  is  true  of  the 
Saviour  is  shown  by  what  the  New  Testament  has 
to  say  about  Jesus:  "It  hath  pleased  God  to  make 
the  captain  of  their  salvation  perfect  through  suf- 
fering." Are  we,  then,  to  understand  that  until 
Calvary  was  over  Jesus  was  imperfect?  Hardly 
that;  but  it  is  one  thing  to  possess  a  beautiful  nature 
and  another  thing  to  have  that  nature  tested  and 
its  perfection  reahsed  and  brought  forth.  This  was 
what  had  to  happen  to  Jesus.  The  winsome  child 
of  Nazareth  might  have  remained  a  recluse  all  His 
life,  knowing  little  or  nothing  about  the  great  world 
outside,  with  no  danger  from  the  fierce  zealots  of 
Jerusalem  or  the  grim  cruelty  of  the  Roman  soldiers. 
But  it  was  not  to  be ;  it  could  not  be.  Jesus  had  to 
come  out  into  the  open,  just  because  He  felt  so 
strongly  that  what  concerned  mankind  as  a  whole 
concerned  Him  in  particular.  That  could  be  no 
perfect    life   which    consulted    its   own    peace    and 


44  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

security  while  the  great  world  beyond  struggled  on 
in  its  blind  suffering  and  its  ignorant  woe.  By  His 
very  disposition  Jesus  was  driven  to  express  His  kin- 
ship with  the  race,  and  to  utter  all  that  was  within 
Him  in  the  effort  to  hear  its  wants  and  satisfy  its 
needs.  It  could  not  have  been  a  perfect  life  which 
was  lived  in  the  sheltered  dale;  it  was  a  perfect 
life  which  overcame  in  the  face  of  the  storm.  In  the 
long  run  this  was  certain  to  mean  for  Jesus  a  Calvary 
of  some  sort,  but  it  also  meant  a  greater  Divine 
dignity  and  glory.  The  divinity  that  was  in  Him  was 
grandly  realised,  and  the  world  has  come  to  recog- 
nise it.  This  is  a  true  New  Testament  thought 
about  Jesus  —  a  thought  frequently  and  freely 
expressed.  Take  as  one  example  the  magnificent 
passage  in  Hebrews  xii. :  "Who  for  the  joy  that  was 
set  before  Him  endured  the  cross,  despising  the 
shame,  and  is  set  down  at  the  right  hand  of  the 
throne  of  God";  or  take  those  beautiful  words  of 
St.  Paul  in  Philippians  ii. :  "And  being  found  in 
fashion  as  a  man.  He  humbled  himself,  and  became 
obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross" 
—  and  Jesus  had  reached  the  cross  before  He  had 
reached  Calvary;  "wherefore  God  also  hath  highly 
exahcd  Him,  and  given  Him  a  name  which  is  above 
every  name :  that  at  the  name  of  Jesus  every  knee 
should  bow  .  .  .  and  that  every  tongue  should  con- 
fess that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord,  to  the  glory  of  God 
the  Father."  Such  statements  as  these  show  with 
absolute  clearness  that  the  men  who  wrote  the  New 


THE    RESURRECTION    POWER 


45 


Testament  believed  that  Jesus  Himself  had  acquired 
a  dignity  by  means  of  the  cross  which  He  could  not 
have  had  without  it. 

But  this  is  not  the  whole  of  the  matter.  The 
spirit  that  saves  is  also  the  spirit  that  suffers,  or  is 
willing  to  suffer,  that  souls  may  be  freed  from  their 
bondage.  Without  this  it  has  no  power.  The  spirit 
of  holiness  with  power  is  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice 
too.  It  is  so  always  and  everywhere.  This  is  the 
truth  that  underlies  all  the  substitutionary  theories 
of  the  Atonement.  We  belong  to  one  another  so 
closely  that  no  life  can  rightly  articulate  the  perfect 
life  if  it  withholds  itself  in  any  degree  from  the  com- 
mon life ;  and  wherever  and  whenever  an  individual 
life  makes  itself  a  free  gift  to  the  common  life,  some 
measure  of  suffering  must  follow.  The  common  life 
of  humanity  is  in  bonds  from  which  only  the  Christ- 
spirit  can  set  it  free;  and  wherever  you  see  that 
Christ-spirit  at  work  you  see  the  cross  willingly  and 
cheerfully  borne.  This  was  brought  home  to  me 
in  a  vivid  and  original  fashion  on  Thursday  morning 
last.  Immediately  after  the  service,  in  which  I  had 
been  speaking  on  an  aspect  of  this  particular  theme, 
a  friend  of  mine,  a  prominent  business  man  in  the 
City,  came  into  the  vestry  and  told  me  the  follow- 
ing experience  of  his  own.  He  happened  to  be 
driving  past  that  grim  erection,  the  new  Old  Bailey, 
as  it  is  called.  Happening  to  glance  up  at  the  build- 
ing, his  attention  was  arrested  by  the  colossal  figure 
of  Justice  which   stands   there.     Justice  is  repre- 


46  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

sented,  as  usual,  as  a  blindfolded  female  holding 
the  even  scales  in  one  hand  and  in  the  other  an 
uplifted  sword  ready  to  strike.  "Ah,"  thought  my 
friend  to  himself,  apostrophising  the  figure  over  the 
gate,  "you  may  wield  your  sword.  Madam  Justice; 
you  may  strike  down  and  destroy  the  poor  wretches 
w^ho  fight  against  organised  society;  but  there  are 
some  things  you  cannot  do  after  all :  the  scales  of 
justice  and  the  sword  of  chastisement  will  not  save 
the  world."  A  few  minutes  afterwards  he  was 
whirled  round  the  comer  of  Ludgate  Hill  and  came 
in  full  view  of  the  great  gold  cross  of  St.  Paul's 
rising  high  above  the  hurrying,  toiling  masses,  and 
the  sun  of  heaven  gleaming  upon  it.  With  sudden 
and  heartfelt  emotion  my  friend  exclaimed,  "There, 
that  is  what  is  saving  the  world ;  not  the  spirit  that 
inflicts  pain,  but  the  spirit  that  willingly  accepts 
pain  in  order  to  lift  up  and  heal  and  unite  mankind 
in  loving  fellowship  with  God."  My  friend  is  a 
true-hearted,  lovable,  humble-spirited  man.  He 
had  just  been  telling  me  a  moment  before  that, 
although  he  felt  the  power  of  the  wider  Gospel 
that  is  being  preached  in  the  name  of  Jesus  to-day, 
he  felt  unequal  to  stating  it  himself.  When  he  had 
finished  telling  me  of  this  particular  incident  — 
the  contrast  between  the  sword  of  the  Criminal 
Court  and  the  great  gold  cross  of  the  Cathedral  — 
I  turned  to  him  and  said,  "I  do  not  know  whether 
you  are  aware  of  the  fact,  but  there  is  something  of 
the   poet   in  you."     He  looked   amused.     "Well," 


THE    RESURRECTION    POWER  47 

I  added,  "go  and  tell  that  story  to  your  friends 
exactly  as  you  have  told  it  to  me,  and  see  whether 
you  cannot  make  them  understand  the  wider  Gospel, 
You  have  got  the  whole  thing  in  a  nutshell.  The 
spirit  of  love  must  show  itself  as  a  spirit  of  sacrifice 
in  a  needy  world  —  that  is,  the  spirit  of  holiness, 
and  nothing  less  than  that  ever  is  worthy  to  be  called 
holy.  The  spirit  of  holiness  is,  blessed  be  God,  also 
the  spirit  of  power."  "Well,"  rephed  my  friend, 
with  a  smile,  as  he  passed  out,  "you  may  be  right, 
but  certainly  no  one  has  ever  accused  me  of  being 
a  poet  before."  I  think  he  is  better  than  that :  he 
is  a  saviour,  a  Christ  man;  he  knows  the  meaning 
of  the  cross.  But,  my  friends,  do  you?  I  think 
you  do.  I  do  not  suppose  that  there  are  more  than 
half  a  dozen  theologians  among  my  hearers,  but 
there  are  men  and  women  in  the  front  rank  of  the 
fighting  line,  people  who  are  trying  hard  to  do 
something  that  is  worth  doing,  something  that  is 
higher  than  their  own  self-interest.  You  have  come 
in  here  with  the  smarts  of  yesterday's  conflicts  upon 
you,  the  memory  of  yesterday's  troubles  in  mind  and 
heart.  Listen  to  what  I  have  to  say  about  this 
principle  in  relation  to  your  own  individual  expe- 
rience. You  know  perfectly  well  that  St.  Paul  was 
right,  and  that  Jesus  was  right,  and  that  what  Jesus 
stood  for  is  that  which  will  save  the  world,  and 
nothing  else  ever  will.  Do  not  suft'er  anything 
or  anybody  to  limit  your  understanding  of  this 
glorious  truth.     If  you  will  allow  it  to  possess  and 


48  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

govern  your  lives,  it  will  deliver  you  from  everything 
that  is  base  and  sordid  in  thought  and  word  and 
deed;  it  will  make  you  love  and  reverence  Jesus 
more  and  more  for  having  shown  you  what  it  means. 
The  expression  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  you  may 
lead  you  to  a  Calvary  —  perhaps  to  many  Calvaries, 
one  after  the  other;  but  Calvary  does  not  matter, 
it  is  only  the  narrow  gateway  through  which  the 
soul  passes  into  freer  air  and  larger  power;  it  is 
the  prelude  to  the  resurrection,  the  rising  up,  the 
issuing  forth,  the  going  forward  of  the  Divine  spirit 
in  man.  This  truth  will  teach  you  more  and  more 
of  the  closeness  of  your  kinship  with  your  brethren 
of  this  world ;  it  will  show  you  that  no  noble  hfe 
ever  has  been  lived  or  can  be  hved  to  itself  alone. 
It  will  enable  you  to  realise  that  all  life  is  one,  and 
that  the  life  of  power  and  joy  is  the  life  that  comes 
nearest  even  on  earth  to  the  realisation  of  this  great 
truth.  It  will  make  you  happier  even  in  the  humble 
service  which  is  rendered  at  home.  It  will  make 
you  wiser  and  stronger  amid  the  monotony  and 
drudgery  of  the  market-place  and  the  business  house. 
You  will  never  cease  to  be  a  son  of  God,  however 
humble  and  obscure  your  task  may  be.  You  can 
realise  all  the  time  that  the  life  that  does  not  fear 
the  cross  is  the  life  that  gains  in  power  by  the  cross, 
the  hfe  that  rises  in  victory  beyond  the  cross  — 
"declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power,  by  the 
resurrection  of  the  dead." 


THE    EVER-PRESENT    CHRIST 

Lo,  I  am  with  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of 
the  world.  —  Matt,  xxviii.  20. 

This  much-quoted  sentence  has  had,  and  I  suppose 
always  will  have,  a  considerable  value  for  Christian 
experience.  It  is  the  declaration  of  a  truth  upon 
which  the  very  life  of  Christianity  depends.  All 
great  religions  reverence  the  memory  of  their 
founders  and  treasure  their  words,  but  Christianity 
does  something  more  than  this :  it  declares  itself 
to  be  immediately  dependent  upon  the  spiritual 
presence  of  its  Lord,  who  continues  to  impact  Him- 
self upon  the  world  through  His  followers.  If  this 
be  true,  no  more  important  truth  has  ever  been 
preached.  Our  text  is  an  explicit  declaration  of  it, 
and  it  behoves  us  therefore  to  make  quite  sure  of  its 
meaning  before  appropriating  its  message. 

You  may  have  observed  that  in  the  marginal 
translation  in  the  Revised  Version  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment the  passage  is  rendered,  "Lo,  I  am  with  you 
all  the  days,  even  unto  the  consummation  of  the 
age."  Now  there  are  several  things  taken  for 
granted  in  this  way  of  putting  the  case,  which  are 
quite  important  in  their  way  and  require  an  ex- 
amination. 

E  49 


50  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

I  will  ask  you  to  note  in  the  first  place  that  Mat- 
thew's version  of  this  promise  is  the  only  one  we 
have  in  the  gospel  record,  although  no  doubt  it  is 
in  substance  authentic.  This  gospel  was  not  written 
until  after  the  newly  formed  Church  of  Christ  had 
begun  to  settle  down  into  something  like  an  organised 
society.  Matthew's  gospel  has  therefore  been  called 
the  ecclesiastical  gospel.  It  contains  Mark's  his- 
tory of  the  doings  of  Jesus  combined  with  Matthew's 
notes  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  But  we  are  justified 
in  taking  for  granted  that  by  the  time  this  book  was 
compiled  both  the  history  and  the  teaching  had  be- 
come woven  into  the  texture  of  the  spiritual  expe- 
rience of  a  generation  which  had  never  seen  Jesus. 
In  our  text  therefore  we  have  a  statement  of  the 
spiritual  experience  of  the  followers  of  Jesus  con- 
cerning their  communion  with  their  Master  long 
after  His  visible  presence  had  been  removed.  The 
earliest  record  of  the  farewell  words  of  Jesus  would 
no  doubt  be  that  contained  in  the  last  few  verses 
of  the  gospel  of  St.  Mark,  which  have  unfortunately 
been  lost.  Some  day  we  may  find  them,  and  if  so 
it  will  be  a  find  of  considerable  importance,  for  it 
may  reconcile  the  other  gospel  accounts  of  the  post- 
resurrection  appearances  of  Jesus  and  the  exact 
terms  of  His  commission  to  His  disciples. 

But  another  thing  to  be  noticed  about  the  present 
form  of  our  text  is  its  reference  to  the  end  of  the 
world.  Most  people  seem  to  take  this  to  mean  the 
winding  up  of  human  affairs  and  the  institution  of 


THE   EVER-PRESENT   CHRIST  5 1 

a  general  judgment  in  the  world  unseen.  To  a 
present-day  reader  this  would  seem  to  be  the  natural 
interpretation  to  put  upon  the  words.  But  that 
is  a  mistake.  The  meaning  is  quite  different.  The 
reference  is  not  to  an  actual  end  of  the  world,  but 
to  a  time  of  fresh  beginnings,  a  millennium  of  peace 
and  blessing  under  the  visible  headship  of  Jesus. 
You  can  see  at  once  that  this  is  not  exactly  what 
Christians  are  thinking  of  now  —  at  any  rate,  not 
in  the  same  way  as  the  first  readers  of  this  gospel 
did.  Both  Christians  and  Jews  in  the  first  century 
were  firmly  possessed  by  the  idea  that  before  very 
long  God  would  put  an  end  to  the  current  dispen- 
sation, would  sweep  out  all  the  evil  in  the  world 
and  all  the  causes  of  suffering,  and  would  inaugurate 
a  new  age  of  universal  prosperity  and  good-will. 
Readers  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells's  book,  "In  the  Days 
of  the  Comet,"  will  remember  that  the  plot  turns 
on  the  crisis  caused  and  the  quick  change  wrought 
in  human  affairs  by  an  enormous  filmy  body  en- 
veloping the  earth  for  a  few  hours.  Immediately 
before  this  event  men  are  going  on  just  as  usual, 
struggling,  suffering,  and  being  afraid  of  one  another. 
A  world-wide  war  is  actually  in  progress,  with  all 
its  train  of  attendant  horrors.  The  comet  strikes, 
and  forthwith  everybody  goes  to  sleep  for  a  short 
time,  to  wake  up  and  find  the  world  regenerated: 
no  more  fighting,  no  more  poverty,  no  more  anguish 
and  heart-break,  no  more  mutual  enmity  and  sus- 
picion.    The  old  world  of  strife  and  wrong  has  been 


5 2  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

re-made.  This  was  almost  precisely  what  the  first 
Christians  and  many  of  their  Jewish  contemporaries 
thought  about  what  they  called,  in  the  words  of 
our  text,  "the  consummation  of  the  age."  The 
dream  differed  from  that  of  Mr.  Wells  in  that  these 
New  Testament  Christians  thought  the  change 
would  be  preceded  by  a  sort  of  Messianic  assize  in 
which  all  the  wicked  would  be  cut  off  with  a  strong 
hand  and  only  the  good  left  to  inherit  the  earth. 
Properly  speaking,  then,. this  was  not  the  end  of  the 
world  at  all :  it  was  rather  a  new  lease  of  life  for  it, 
the  beginning  of  a  period  of  splendour  and  joy 
which  they  called  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  Chris- 
tians who  first  read  my  text  were  firmly  persuaded 
that  this  change  was  just  at  hand,  and  that  Jesus  as 
the  Messiah  would  return  to  earth  and  bring  it  to 
pass.  They  lived  in  daily  expectation  that  this 
event  would  take  place  when  the  world's  cup  of 
iniquity  was  full.  They  were  not  thinking  of  a 
heaven  on  the  farther  side  of  death  so  much  as  a 
heaven  on  this,  a  heaven  to  be  enjoyed  without  dying. 
They  did  not  expect  to  have  to  wait  long  for  it  either. 
Jesus  might  come  at  any  moment  on  the  clouds  of 
heaven.  What  they  had  to  do  was  to  go  on  telling 
men  about  Him  and  trying  to  get  them  to  live  a 
better  life  in  preparation  for  the  new  kingdom. 

Then  too  they  thought  of  Jesus  as  being  spirit- 
ually present  with  them  in  the  doing  of  this  ap- 
pointed work,  and  the  experience  was  very  real  and 
very  beautiful,  the  most  precious  and  inspiring  they 


THE    EVER-PRESENT    CHRIST  53 

had  ever  had.  Gibbon  the  historian,  in  his  "De- 
cHne  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  points  out 
that  the  distinguishing  mark  of  early  Christianity 
was  the  fervent  devotion  of  the  Christians  to  their 
Lord  and  their  belief  in  His  continued  presence  with 
them  as  the  source  of  all  their  power  and  the  means 
to  all  their  triumphs.  They  died  for  Him  willingly 
and  cheerfully,  feeling  sure  that  it  would  not  be  long 
before  His  voice  would  call  them  again  from  the 
sleep  of  death  to  partake  in  His  victory  over  human 
wickedness  and  to  share  in  His  glorious  reign. 

This  is  the  literal  interpretation  of  these  words, 
and  thore  can  be  no  gainsaying  the  fact.  As  cen- 
turies have  passed  the  Christian  Church  has  come 
to  think  of  them  rather  differently,  but  this  is  what 
they  mean  at  first.  You  can  all  see  at  once  that 
this  is  not  the  way  in  which  we  ordinarily  understand 
them  now.  We  are  not  looking  for  a  visible  second 
coming  of  Jesus  on  the  clouds  of  heaven.  Some 
people  say  they  are,  but  they  do  not  allow  the  behef 
to  influence  their  conduct  in  any  drastic  fashion  :  they 
still  go  on  buying  and  selling,  seeing  to  their  banking 
accounts,  and  making  a  provision  for  old  age,  just 
as  though  there  were  no  probability  that  these 
things  might  never  be  needed.  Most  of  us  are  hoping 
to  see  the  world  become  better,  but  we  do  not  expect 
to  see  it  made  perfect  in  a  single  day.  Those  of  us 
who  believe  in  immortality  may  believe  in  some  kind 
of  a  general  judgment,  but  we  certainly  do  not  expect 
to  see  it  take  place  on  earth,  followed  by  the  solemn 


54 


NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 


inauguration  of  a  world-wide  kingdom  with  Jesus 
as  its  king.  On  the  contrary,  most  of  our  hymns 
and  our  pulpit  language  are  mainly  concerned  with 
the  joy  that  will  be  ours  when  we  see  our  Master 
face  to  face  in  a  heaven  beyond  the  tomb.  No  doubt 
we  all  believe  that  some  time  or  other  the  world 
must  come  to  an  end ;  and  therefore,  when  we  think 
about  such  a  passage  as  our  text,  we  understand  it 
as  meaning  that  so  long  as  we  are  here,  and  so  long 
as  the  world  endures,  Jesus  will  be  with  His  own, 
helping,  encouraging,  and  guiding  them  until  they 
pass  to  everlasting  bliss. 

It  is  plain,  then,  that  what  the  early  Church 
thought  about  these  words  was  not  precisely  what 
we  think  now.  But  were  the  first  Christians,  then, 
entirely  mistaken  as  to  their  meaning?  Had  they 
one  kind  of  experience  and  we  another  ?  Or  is  there 
any  sense  in  which  they  thought  and  felt  the  same 
as  we  do  about  the  spiritual  presence  of  Jesus  and 
its  value  for  mankind  ?  I  think  that  fundamentally 
Christian  experience  has  always  been  the  same. 
It  is  just  the  same  for  us  as  it  was  for  the  first  fol- 
lowers of  Jesus.  Some  time  ago  Mr,  G.  K.  Chester- 
ton delivered  an  address  to  the  members  of  the  City 
Temple  Literary  Society  on  "Some  Delusions  of 
Doubt,"  in  the  course  of  which  he  made  at  least  one 
true  remark.  He  said  that  Christian  experience 
was  so  much  a  constant  thing  that  any  true  follower 
of  Jesus  to-day  would  understand  and  be  able  to 
share  in  the  religious  outlook  of  any  Christian  of 


THE    EVER-PRESENT    CHRIST  55 

primitive  times.  This  is  indisputably  true.  We 
have  the  same  Lord  and  the  same  relation  to  Him, 
and  we  speak  of  Him  in  much  the  same  way.  How 
does  this  come  about?  How  are  we  to  understand 
the  spiritual  presence  of  Jesus,  and  what  practical 
importance  does  it  possess? 

This  is  a  region  where  every  Christian  becomes 
a  mystic;  he  cannot  help  it.  To  commune  with  a 
bodiless  Jesus  means  to  commune  with  the  funda- 
mental reality  of  your  own  being  and  of  every  other 
being.  You  are  communing  with  Divinity,  with 
the  Self  of  all  selves,  with  the  Soul  of  all  existence. 
I  do  not  know  whether  you  who  prayed  to  Jesus  with 
me  to-night  were  all  aware  of  what  you  were  doing 
and  of  what  was  implied  in  it,  but  you  were  engaging 
in  an  exercise  which  linked  you  to  infinity  and  made 
you  omnipresent.  For  see  what  we  were  saying, 
and  this,  remember,  is  what  Christians  have  always 
been  saying.  We  were  saying  that  our  own  hu- 
manity is  on  the  throne  of  God.  True  humanity 
it  was  and  is,  a  humanity  we  can  understand  because 
it  has  lived  our  hmited  life.  To  talk  about  the  love 
of  God  would  be  rather  meaningless  if  the  world 
had  never  known  the  love  of  Jesus.  But  now,  the 
love,  the  very  love  that  drove  the  Galilean  Carpenter 
out  into  the  open  that  He  might  tell  about  God  to 
the  toiling  masses  of  His  own  day  and  generation, 
is  up  yonder  in  the  heart  of  the  Infinite,  and  up 
yonder  is  down  here,  in  my  heart  too  as  well  as 
yours.     I  do  not  mean  that  Jesus  has  become  lost 


56  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

in  God  since  He  laid  down  His  suffering  body,  but 
I  mean  that  I  cannot  see  God  anywhere  without 
seeing  the  face  of  Jesus.  This  is  the  greatest  leap 
that  religious  aspiration  has  ever  taken.  We  have 
seen  something  worshipful  in  the  homespun  of  a 
Jewish  peasant,  and  forthwith  we  have  recognised 
it  as  Divine  and  eternal.  Looking  upon  the  life  of 
Jesus,  we  behold  the  veil  taken  from  before  the  face 
of  God. 

To  the  man  with  anything  of  spiritual  suscepti- 
bility the  world  is  full  of  God;  even  its  splendours 
and  terrors  tell  of  a  mysterious  reality  which  is  more 
ourselves  than  we  are.  Forgive  that  curious  turn 
of  phrase,  but  I  cannot  find  another  to  express  what 
I  mean.  I  mean  that  what  is  truest  in  every  one 
of  us  is  unfathomable;  it  belongs  to  the  universal 
more  than  the  particular.  There  is  not  a  single  man 
among  you,  however  commonplace,  who  does  not 
belong  far  more  to  God  than  he  does  to  himself; 
indeed,  the  self  is  meaningless  apart  from  God. 
I  must  confess  that  I  am  never  able  to  gaze  upon  the 
glory  of  the  mountain  or  the  flood  without  feeling 
that  the  great  reality  manifested  there  has  far  more 
to  do  with  me  than  I  have  with  myself.  To  be  sure^ 
it  is  a  mystery,  and  might  be  even  a  terror ;  but  then 
"the  Life  was  manifested,  and  we  have  seen  it." 
We  know  what  it  is  now,  for  we  have  seen  Jesus. 
Nature  may  disguise  herself  as  she  pleases,  but  I 
know  she  has  nothing  more  to  tell  me  than  what 
I   already   know  about  the  pulsing  heart  of  it  all: 


THE    EVER-PRESENT    CHRIST  57 

I  have  seen  Jesus.  The  round  ocean  and  the  hving 
air  are  language  expressive  of  a  beauty  and  sub- 
limity that  are  a  rebuke  to  petty  ideals  and  selfish 
purposes,  but  the  spirit  whose  presence  they  reveal 
is  after  all  only  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  The  roaring 
torrent,  speeding  on  its  destructive  way,  is  but  the 
undertone  of  the  song  of  the  multitude  whom  no 
man  can  number,  whose  voice  is  as  the  voice  of  many 
waters  chanting  the  praise  of  Jesus.  Earthquake 
and  tempest,  plague,  pestilence,  and  famine,  are 
sombre  notes  in  the  universal  symphony;  but  the 
world  need  not  fear  them;  they  have  no  meaning 
other  than  what  earth  and  heaven  have  already  in 
Jesus.  Death  itself  is  but  a  mask.  He  has  no 
terrors  for  him  whose  life  is  lived  in  constant  fellow- 
ship with  the  Highest;  we  can  smile  in  his  face. 
He  is  no  enemy.  What  can  he  do?  At  the  best 
and  at  the  worst  he  is  the  minister  of  Jesus,  and  has 
no  other  mission  and  no  other  meaning.  Do  you 
see  what  I  am  driving  at  ?  Jesus  spoke  to  the  world 
the  last  word  about  God.  Does  any  other  word 
matter  in  comparison?  Can  there  be  any  other 
word  which  has  no  relation  to  Him?  The  one 
governing  thought  of  my  text,  the  one  which  I  want 
you  to  take  away  with  you  and  apply  to  every  event 
of  your  lives,  is  the  declaration  that  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  and  the  spirit  of  this  mysterious  universe  are 
one  and  the  same.  Seeing  Him,  you  see  all;  there 
is  nothing  more  to  see.  You  cannot  escape  the 
universe;  it  is  with  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of 


58  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

your  days.  But  even  at  its  darkest  and  hardest  it 
can  always  be  interpreted  by  one  word,  and  that 
word  is  Jesus.     God  has  no  more  to  say. 

Just  think  how  this  perception  will  simplify  your 
acquaintance  with  life.  There  is  but  one  reality, 
and  that  is  God;  and  only  one  thing  we  need  to 
know  about  God,  and  that  was  revealed  in  Jesus. 
No  other  power  and  no  other  spirit  have  any  domin- 
ion over  you,  unless  you  choose  to  fancy  that  it  is 
so.  If  you  rest  quietly  in  the  assurance  that  that 
unescapable  reality  that  is  with  you  always,  the 
reality  which  is  fundamentally  yourself  and  every- 
thing else,  is  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  what  else  need  you 
trouble  about?  Everything  else  is  summed  up  in 
that  one  discovery.  This  it  was  that  made  the  first 
Christians  invincible,  and  what  it  did  for  them  it 
can  also  do  for  you. 

It  sometimes  seems  to  me  that  the  one  great  thing 
that  needs  to  be  done  for  the  average  man  to-day 
is  to  get  him  to  stop  thinking  that  the  world  can 
do  him  any  harm,  or  that  it  rests  with  him  to  put 
anything  right  that  seems  to  have  been  put  wrong. 
The  utmost  we  can  do  with  our  lives  is  to  give  them 
up  to  the  all-controlling  wisdom  and  love  of  God. 
We  do  nothing;  He  working  through  us  can  do 
everything.  Let  a  man  once  become  firmly  pos- 
sessed of  this  fundamental  principle  of  all  spiritual 
experience,  and  it  will  save  him  from  everything  that 
tends  to  make  life  fruitless  and  full  of  dread.  What 
can  you  possibly  have  to  reckon  with  except  that 


THE   EVER-PRESENT    CHRIST 


59 


all-pervading  presence  represented  and  summed  up 
in  the  name  of  Jesus?  I  mean  this  statement,  too, 
every  word.  I  do  not  mean  merely  that  Jesus 
illustrates  the  universe;  He  is  the  universe.  He 
does  not  merely  reveal  the  Infinite ;  He  is  the  Infinite. 
I  even  wish  you  could  manage  to  think  about  your- 
self in  this  way.  You  are  not  outside  of  God;  you 
never  were,  you  never  can  be.  You  too  belong  to 
the  Infinite,  and  your  eternal  destiny  is  the  fellow- 
ship of  Jesus.  When  the  early  Christians  realised 
this  they  laughed  at  Caesar  and  his  lions,  and  bore 
neither  of  them  any  grudge.  It  enabled  them  to 
die  without  hating  the  men  who  killed  them,  and 
to  live  without  being  afraid  of  to-morrow.  They 
lost  themselves  in  one  all-compelling  ideal,  the  love 
of  Jesus,  and  they  knew  that  nothing  else  mattered. 
One  of  the  greatest  of  them,  perhaps  the  very  greatest, 
nobly  expressed  the  feelings  of  all  the  rest  when  he 
wrote:  "Who  shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of 
Christ?  Shall  tribulation,  or  distress,  or  perse- 
cution, or  famine,  or  nakedness,  or  peril,  or  sword  ? 
As  it  is  written.  For  Thy  sake  we  are  killed  all  the 
day  long;  we  are  accounted  as  sheep  for  the 
slaughter.  Nay,  in  all  these  things  we  are  more 
than  conquerors,  through  Him  that  loved  us.  For 
I  am  persuaded  that  neither  death  nor  life,  nor 
angels,  nor  principalities,  nor  powers,  nor  things 
present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height,  nor  depth,  nor 
any  other  creature,  shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from 
the  love  of  God,  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord." 


6o  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

This  is  the  truth  declared  in  our  text,  the  truth 
which,  as  you  see,  has  made  Christianity  possible, 
and  the  truth  which  is  vital  to  its  existence  to-day. 
We  cannot  do  without  it.  It  is  fundamental  to  all 
goodness,  even  when  only  half  recognised.  Where 
the  spirit  of  Christ  is  there  is  God,  and  by  no  pos- 
sibility can  you  get  away  from  God,  even  if  you 
wished  to  do  so.  When  a  bad  man  tries  to  live  his 
life  by  denying  this  he  is  attempting  an  impossible 
task,  for  he  is  running  up  against  Infinity,  he  is 
crucifying  his  own  true  self.  In  such  a  case  the 
spirit  of  Christ  within  him  will  sooner  or  later  destroy 
the  falsehoods  by  which  he  is  living  his  Hfe,  and  that 
destruction  will  mean  sorrow  and  pain.  The  first 
Christians  knew  this  when  they  went  out  to  pit 
themselves  against  the  cruel  might  of  the  pagan 
world.  They  were  perfectly  well  aware  that  all 
the  devilry  of  old  Rome  would  have  to  go  down 
before  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  and  so  it  did.  The  prom- 
ise, ''I  am  with  you  unto  the  end,"  was  grandly 
fulfilled  when  the  end  of  that  particular  form  of  evil 
came.  It  will  be  so  with  every  form  of  evil ;  nothing 
in  the  long  run  can  stand  against  Jesus.  The  love 
of  God  may  become  the  lightning  which  shatters 
an  age-long  lie.  You  men  who  scoff  at  truth,  who 
are  trying  to  live  without  God,  whose  lives  are  built 
on  selfishness,  take  warning.  There  comes  an  end 
some  time,  whether  soon  or  late,  when  the  love  that 
hung  on  Calvary  becomes  the  judge  of  wickedness 
and  works  its  overthrow.     Every  evil  deed  has  its 


THE   EVER-PRESENT   CHRIST  6 1 

price  in  pain,  the  pain  caused  by  the  uprising  of 
the  buried  Christ.  It  is  no  good  trying  to  fight 
against  God,  for,  being  what  you  really  are,  truth 
will  claim  you  through  the  earthquake,  wind,  and 
fire.  Life  is  short  at  the  longest,  and  here  or  else- 
where you  have  got  to  reckon  with  Jesus  and  all  that 
the  name  of  Jesus  stands  for. 

On  the  other  hand,  let  those  of  whom  the  world 
is  not  worthy  take  courage  and  rejoice.  Never  fall 
into  weak  self-pity.  He  who  is  with  you  all  the  days 
is  more  than  equal  to  the  hardest  storm  that  ever 
blew.  No  human  need  is  forgotten  in  the  eternal 
wisdom,  and  no  odds  are  too  heavy  for  Christ.  I 
wish  it  were  in  my  power  to  show  every  one  of  you 
how  to  recognise  the  spirit  of  Christ  in  your  daily 
concerns  and  how  to  trust  its  redeeming  might. 
You  must  never  think  of  Jesus  as  though  He  were 
at  a  great  distance  waiting  for  news  of  what  you 
were  doing,  and  glad  to  hear  that  you  were  doing 
well.  Without  Him  you  have  never  yet  done  any- 
thing that  was  worth  doing.  He  is  the  vine,  you 
are  the  branches.  Look  for  the  eternal  Christ  in 
every  deed  that  is  worthy  of  Jesus,  and  believe  it 
to  be  irresistible  in  its  operation.  In  the  little 
self-denials  of  the  home  circle,  the  gracious  loving 
ministries  that  help  to  make  life  pure  and  sweet, 
behold  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  I  do  not  mean  merely 
something  like  Jesus,  something  of  which  Jesus  would 
be  glad;  I  mean  the  eternal  reality  itself,  the  very 
spirit  of  the  Christ  manifesting  in  our  common  life. 


62  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

If  you  have  eyes  to  see,  you  can  discern  the  same 
great  principle,  the  presence  of  the  Christ  of  glory, 
in  all  the  tragic  and  terrible  things  of  life.  Take, 
for  example,  the  wreck  of  the  Berlin,  which  has 
excited  such  widespread  sorrow  and  compassion. 
Here  is  a  terrible  event,  sure  enough,  though  not 
one  whit  more  terrible  than  things  which  are  taking 
place  in  individual  experience  every  day,  only  the 
general  pubhc  does  not  hear  about  them.  But 
who  among  us  is  not  moved  to  admiration  by  the 
accounts  which  have  reached  us  concerning  the 
magnificent  behaviour  of  some  of  the  rescuers  and 
would-be  rescuers?  All  the  world  is  paying  honour 
to  Captain  Sperling  and  his  little  group  of  helpers 
who  took  the  last  three  human  beings  alive  from 
the  doomed  ship.  There  was  not  much  probability 
that  Captain  Sperling's  own  hfe  would  survive  the 
perilous  attempt ;  but  it  did,  and  as  long  as  he  lives 
the  story  will  be  told  of  the  deed  which  proved  what 
manner  of  man  he  was.  But  not  a  whit  less  glo- 
rious, though  more  pathetic,  was  the  self-devotion 
of  the  steward  who  tried  to  save  the  little  five-year- 
old  boy  who  had  been  placed  in  his  charge.  When 
the  bodies  were  washed  ashore  the  little  one  was  found 
clasped  in  the  arms  of  the  man  who  had  perished  in 
the  effort  to  bring  him  safe  to  shore.  What  are  we 
to  say  about  deeds  like  these  ?  Every  one  reverences 
them,  but  not  every  one  seems  to  see  the  truth  of 
which  they  are  the  token.  These  are  the  things 
which  ordinary  men  do  on  extraordinary  occasions. 


THE   EVER-PRESENT   CHRIST  63 

and  in  so  doing  prove  themselves  divine.  This  is 
the  very  spirit  of  the  Christ  who  is  with  us  all  the 
days.  Given  the  occasion,  and  this  spirit  will  always 
show  itself,  even  in  the  most  unlikely  people.  I 
do  not  want  to  enter  into  the  question  why  such  a 
thing  as  the  Berlin  wreck  should  ever  be  permitted 
to  take  place.  I  do  not  think  it  is  wholly  and  en- 
tirely an  impenetrable  mystery,  but  I  do  not  want 
to  discuss  it  just  now.  All  I  want  to  point  out  is 
that  no  sooner  does  the  need  arise  or  the  trouble 
come  than  you  see  a  manifestation  of  the  Christ- 
spirit  in  some  humble  child  of  the  Highest.  I  de- 
clare and  maintain  that  this  is  the  true  fulfilment  of 
the  declaration,  "Lo,  I  am  with  you  all  the  days, 
even  unto  the  end  of  the  world." 

But  I  maintain  even  more  earnestly  that  you  can 
see  the  same  spirit  in  ordinary  everyday  life  wherever 
the  love  of  Jesus  becomes  the  inspiration  of  a  beauti- 
ful action  or  a  noble  unselfish  purpose.  You  will 
not  go  a  dozen  yards  from  this  church  door  to-night 
without  seeing  something  of  it.  Go  wherever  love 
is  trying  to  bind  up  the  wounds  made  by  hardness 
and  selfishness,  and  you  will  see  it  at  once.  Look 
into  any  life  which  has  been  shaped  and  fashioned 
by  living  faith  in  Jesus,  and  you  will  see  this  promise 
fulfilled. 

Where  the  many  toil  and  suflfer, 

There  am  I  among  mine  own ; 
Where  the  tired  workman  sleepeth, 

There  am  I  with  him  alone. 


64  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

Never  more  thou  needest  seek  Me, 

I  am  with  thee  everywhere : 
Raise  the  stone,  and  thou  shalt  find  Me; 

Cleave  the  wood,  and  I  am  there. 

May  God  open  your  eyes  that  you  may  see  this 
wondrous  truth  in  hourly  operation.  May  He 
move  your  heart  to  give  it  expression,  so  that  you 
may  one  and  all  enter  into  the  joy  of  your  Lord. 


THE  SINLESSNESS  OF  JESUS 
"  Which  of  you  convinceth  Me  of  sin?  "  —  John  viii.  46. 

These  words  constitute  a  standing  challenge,  ad- 
dressed not  so  much  to  the  contemporaries  of  Jesus 
as  to  the  moral  sense  of  the  human  race  in  all  time. 
It  is  a  challenge  which  has  been  abundantly  justified. 
Somehow  the  civiHsed  world  has  come  almost  to  take 
for  granted  the  moral  pre-eminence  of  Jesus.  But 
why  should  the  world  take  that  for  granted  ?  Why 
should  we  regard  Jesus  as  a  sinless  being  ?  Why 
should  we  assume  Him  to  be  morally  perfect?  and 
why  do  we  hold  Him  up  as  the  norm  and  standard 
of  what  all  humanity  ought  to  be?  These  are 
searching  questions.  Our  text,  rightly  understood, 
is  the  answer  to  them;  and  I  therefore  ask  you  to 
proceed  with  me  to  examine  into  its  meaning,  and 
the  purpose  with  which  it  is  written  here. 

To  begin  with,  I  want  you  to  agree  with  me  that 
these  words  in  all  probability  are  not  the  words  of 
Jesus  at  all.  This  may  seem  a  startling  way  to 
begin  answering  my  own  question,  and  I  could  under- 
stand that  some  of  you  on  hearing  that  remark  might 
feel  that  one  had  given  away  the  whole  case.  On  the 
contrary,  I  am  perfectly  sure  that  this  statement  is 
F  65 


66  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

the  basis  upon  which  the  whole  case  rests :  it  is 
the  reason  why  I  am  so  sure  about  the  moral  tran- 
scendence of  Jesus.  We  have  here  not  so  much  the 
words  of  Jesus  about  Himself  as  the  expression  of 
primitive  Christian  experience  about  Him.  Chris- 
tian experience  is  making  exactly  the  same  claim 
to-day,  and  has  never  ceased  to  make  it  for  nineteen 
centuries.  The  following  are  my  reasons  for  saying 
that  these  are  not  the  words  of  Jesus.  In  the  first 
place,  this  book,  the  fourth  gospel,  was  not  written 
as  an  historical  treatise,  and  the  writer  never  meant 
us  to  understand  that  it  was  anything  of  the  kind. 
It  belonged  to  an  order  of  literature  to  which  the 
people  of  the  race  and  the  time  in  which  this  man 
wrote  were  well  accustomed;  that  is,  it  was  meant 
to  teach  a  certain  truth  under  the  form  of  a  story. 
This  man  has  a  purpose  in  view,  and  he  never  loses 
sight  of  that  purpose  from  the  first  page  of  his  book 
to  the  last.  It  is  to  enable  us  to  listen  to  the  voice 
of  the  Christ  of  Christian  experience,  the  risen, 
exalted,  unlimited  Son  of  God.  He  wants  us  to 
Hsten  to  the  testimony  of  the  Ideal  Humanity,  and 
consequently  he  begins  where  the  other  gospels 
leave  off:  he  begins  with  what  Christian  experience 
had  already  realised  to  be  the  truth  about  Jesus. 
Take  his  own  words:  "These  [things]  are  written, 
that  ye  might  believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the 
Son  of  God;  and  that  beHeving  ye  might  have  life 
through  His  name."  That  is  why  he  wrote  the 
book.     Some    years    ago    an    American    minister, 


THE    SINLESSNESS    OF    JESUS  67 

Charles  M.  Sheldon,  wrote  a  book  on  the  title-page 
of  which  he  put  the  question,  "What  would  Jesus 
do?"  Forthwith  thousands  upon  thousands  of 
people  bought  that  book  —  not  only  churchgoers, 
but  the  most  unlikely  people  —  and  read  it  simply 
because  of  the  question  on  the  title-page.  They 
wanted  to  see  what  Jesus  might  be  supposed  to  be 
saying  to  men  of  this  generation  —  business  men, 
professional  men,  statesmen,  and  others.  Nobody 
imagined  that  that  story  was  literally  true;  it  used 
historical  material  for  a  spiritual  purpose,  and  worked 
it  out  precisely  as  the  author  wished.  The  fourth 
gospel,  on  a  grander  scale  and  at  a  higher  altitude, 
does  exactly  the  same  thing.  What  this  man  (who 
appears  to  have  loved  Jesus  with  all  his  heart,  though 
perhaps  he  never  saw  Him)  means  us  to  understand 
is,  that  you  are  listening  here  to  the  testimony  of 
Christian  experience  about  Jesus;  and  he  wants 
you  to  hear  through  Christian  experience  the  voice 
of  the  Jesus  whom  he  supposed  to  be  reigning  in 
glory  at  the  moment  when  the  book  was  written. 
I  have  so  much  sympathy  with  that  man's  work  that 
this  is  my  favourite  gospel  of  the  four.  It  seems  to 
take  one  right  to  the  inwardness  of  things,  and  with 
unclouded  vision  we  behold  the  truth,  not  only  about 
Jesus,  but  about  the  divinity  of  mankind.  Re- 
member, then,  that  this  does  not  profess  to  be  a 
history;   it  is  a  spiritual  treatise. 

Secondly,  I  want  you  to  realise  that  the  Jesus 
of  this  fourth  gospel  differs  in  certain  important 


68  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

particulars  from  the  Jesus  of  the  other  three.  You 
can  verify  that  fact  for  yourself  if  you  will  take  your 
New  Testament  and  read  it,  putting  out  of  sight 
any  prejudice  you  may  now  have  in  mind.  For 
one  thing,  this  Jesus  of  the  fourth  gospel  talks  a 
great  deal  about  himself;  the  Jesus  of  the  other 
three  does  not.  The  Jesus  of  the  fourth  gospel  is 
represented  as  making  long  speeches  about  His  super- 
natural claims  and  His  moral  transcendence.  In 
the  chapter  before  us  He  is  shown  as  insisting,  so 
to  speak,  upon  those  claims  and  upon  the  fact  that 
He  is  a  morally  flawless  being.  Now  you  know  that 
the  earthly  Jesus  would  not  do  that,  nor  would  it  be 
reasonable  for  Him  to  do  anything  of  the  kind. 
To  expect  these  prejudiced  Jews  to  believe  that  he 
was  morally  perfect  simply  because  He  said  so 
would  be  utterly  unreasonable.  It  is  not  the 
earthly  Jesus,  it  is  the  Christ  of  Christian  experience 
who  is  speaking  in  these  pages  and  making  the 
claim  which  Christian  experience  continues  to  make 
for  Him. 

Further,  such  a  claim,  if  made  by  the  earthly 
Jesus,  would  have  defeated  its  own  object ;  it  would 
have  been  both  useless  and  absurd.  The  very  issue 
between  Jesus  and  the  Pharisees  was  the  issue  be- 
tween His  ideal  of  righteousness  and  theirs,  His 
notion  of  sin  and  theirs;  and  they  were  quite  as 
much  in  earnest  about  theirs  as  He  was  about  His. 
The  Pharisees  had  an  idea,  which  they  had  com- 
municated to  the  whole  public,  that  righteousness 


THE    SINLESSNESS    OF    JESUS  69 

consisted  in  doing  certain  tilings,  and  unrighteousness 
in  leaving  them  undone.  They  were  to  wash  so 
many  times  a  day;  there  were  just  so  many  cere- 
monial deeds  and  ritual  performances  to  be  got 
through;  and  the  Pharisees  who  did  these  things 
"trusted  in  themselves  that  they  were  righteous, 
and  despised  others."  It  was  all  a  matter  of  ex- 
ternal deeds.  They  called  the  people  righteous 
who  were,  technically  speaking,  experts  in  keeping 
the  law;  and  they  called  the  people  sinners  who, 
technically  speaking,  could  not  keep  the  law.  Most 
of  you  would  have  been  sinners  in  the  Pharisaic 
sense,  whether  you  are  sinners  in  the  sight  of  God 
or  not ;  because  you  have  a  living  to  get,  you  have 
to  work  a  good  many  hours  a  day  at  that,  and  you 
would  not  have  time  to  become  an  expert  in  the 
keeping  of  the  Deuteronomic  code.  So  there  could 
be  only  a  few  "righteous"  in  their  sense,  and  a 
great  crowd  of  "sinners,"  many  of  whom  were  good 
enough  in  their  way.  When  Jesus  came  He  brushed 
all  that  nonsense  on  one  side;  He  said,  in  effect. 
That  is  not  righteousness,  and  the  people  you  call 
sinners  are  not  necessarily  sinners  in  the  true  sense 
at  all.  Righteousness  consists  in  being  in  harmony 
with  God ;  it  is  being  like  God.  Sinfulness  is  being 
selfish,  being  unlike  God ;  and  some  of  you  men  who 
actually  claim  to  be  the  custodians  of  an  official 
righteousness  are  as  selfish  as  you  can  be;  you  are 
unreal,  material,  hard,  hypocritical.  Thus  Jesus 
condemned  their  notions  of  right  and  wrong,  and  if 


70  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

there  were  anything  that  could  rouse  Him  to  anger, 
it  was  the  kind  of  man  who  claimed  to  be  righteous 
in  the  Pharisaic  sense  and  despised  everybody  else. 

Now  you  see  how  impossible  it  was  for  Jesus  to 
make  the  claim  put  forth  in  my  text:  "Which  of 
you  convicteth  [that  is  the  word]  Me  of  sin?" 
Why,  they  would  have  convicted  Him  of  sin  at 
once!  They  said  so.  They  declared:  "This  man 
eateth  and  drinketh  with  publicans  and  sinners"; 
"He  hath  a  devil,  and  is  mad";  "gluttonous  and 
a  wine-bibber";  and  so  on.  They  did  not  wait  for 
Jesus  to  appeal  to  them  to  be  His  judge ;  they  con- 
demned Him  out  of  hand.  In  the  end  they  crucified 
Him,  because  they  said  He  was  a  sinner.  Accord- 
ing to  their  standard,  they  were  quite  ready  enough 
to  convict  Him  of  sin.  It  is  clear,  then,  that  these 
are  not,  and  could  not  be,  the  words  of  Jesus  about 
Himself.  They  are  the  expression  of  spiritual  ex- 
perience concerning  Him.  Is  that  experience  jus- 
tified? 

What  do  we  mean  by  sinlessness?  Let  us  be 
quite  clear  about  that  before  we  go  any  farther, 
because  most  of  the  difficulties  that  have  arisen  with 
respect  to  Christianity  have  arisen  out  of  confusion 
about  questions  of  that  kind.  For  instance,  the- 
ologians are  accustomed  to  effect  a  separation  in 
thought  between  God's  holiness  and  His  love; 
and  a  favourite  phrase  in  the  mouths  of  religious 
people  has  often  been,  "the  awful  holiness  of  God." 
I  do  not  object  to  that  phrase  so  long  as  you  realise 


THE    SINLESSNESS    OF    JESUS  7 1 

that  the  holiness  of  God  is  His  love,  and  never  was 
anything  else.  Love  knows  no  compromise,  and  will 
be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  the  highest  for 
and  from  its  object.  Thus,  if  God  is  love,  and  you 
are  living  a  life  of  selfishness,  He  will  not  suffer  you 
to  continue  doing  so;  and  therefore,  if  you  like  to 
say  so,  the  love  of  God  is  the  wrath  of  God.  Love, 
righteousness,  holiness,  judgment,  mercy,  wrath,  are 
all  one  and  the  same.  Sinlessness  is  to  be  under- 
stood in  terms  of  this  ideal,  and  not  otherwise.  If 
you  were  asked  to  tell  somebody  what  you  under- 
stand by  sinlessness  some  of  you  might  say,  "A 
sinless  life  is  a  life  lived  in  accordance  with  the  will 
of  God."  Yes,  but  do  not  forget  what  the  will  of 
God  is  —  it  is  the  highest  from  you.  Or,  again, 
"Sinlessness  is  life  lived  in  harmony  with  its  own 
highest."  Yes,  but  the  highest  of  some  men  is  not 
very  high.  We  will  try  again.  A  sinless  life  is  a 
life  lived  in  harmony  with  the  highest  of  which  hu- 
man nature  is  capable;  in  other  words,  it  is  the 
flawless  reflection  or  expression  of  the  nature  of 
God.  God  is  love,  and  therefore  to  express  God  is 
to  live  the  life  which  is  perfect  love.  Human  love 
may  be  a  very  selfish  thing  in  some  of  its  manifes- 
tations :  your  love  for  your  child  may  mean  that 
you  hate  your  neighbour's  child ;  your  love  for  your 
husband  may  be  that  you  are  jealous  of  your 
sister's  husband.  But  love,  in  the  sense  that  I  have 
described  it,  means  doing  the  most  you  can  for 
mankind ;  it  means  that  your  life  is  one  of  unceasing 


72  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

goodwill,  that  you  make  the  most  of  yourself  for 
the  sake  of  humanity.  There  is  a  duty  of  self- 
formation  —  the  utmost  for  the  whole.  It  means 
that  self  is  fulfilled  in  serving  the  race;  it  means, 
impossible  though  it  may  seem  —  because  you  and 
I  are  not  living  it,  you  know  —  absolute  disinterested- 
ness; it  means  a  strong  and  a  positive  thing,  not  a 
weak  and  a  negative. 

Have  love,  not  love  alone  for  one, 
But  man  as  man  thy  brother  call, 

And  scatter,  like  the  circling  sun, 
Thy  benefits  on  all. 

It  means  that  if  you  were  living  the  sinless  life,  the 
ideal  life,  you  would  be  living  as  though  all  humanity 
belonged  to  you,  and  you  would  forget  your  poor 
individuality  in  the  fact.  If  men  were  living  this 
hfe  it  would  be  heaven  on  earth;  there  would  be 
nothing  more  to  be  done.  But  who  is  living  that 
life?  We  may  agree  in  the  abstract  as  to  what  we 
want,  but  we  do  not  always  recognise  it  when  we 
see  it  in  the  concrete.  For  instance,  suppose  I  were 
foolish  enough  to  put  forth  a  claim  to  personal  sin- 
lessness,  or  some  of  you  were  foolish  enough  to  make 
it  for  me,  and  write  to  the  papers  and  say  the  min- 
ister of  the  City  Temple  was  the  only  flawless  being 
in  London.  Forthwith  half  the  editors  in  London 
would  receive  voluminous  correspondence  pointing 
out  conspicuous  flaws  in  the  character  of  the  man 
for  whom  sinlessness  was  claimed.     A  little  while 


THE    SINLESSNESS    OF    JESUS  73 

ago,  if  you  will  pardon  a  personal  allusion,  I  went 
to  preach  in  a  Baptist  church  in  South  London. 
Just  before  going  into  the  pulpit  a  letter  was  put 
into  my  hand  written  by  a  very  serious-minded 
individual,  in  which  the  writer  gave  twelve  good 
reasons,  according  to  his  standard,  why  I  was  morally 
unfit  to  enter  that  sacred  pulpit  and  preach  the 
gospel  to  the  people  assembled.  I  have  no  doubt 
there  would  be  somebody  else  who  would  have 
twelve  other  reasons  why  one  should  not  enter  that 
pulpit,  but  I  am  perfectly  certain  no  two  persons 
would  have  the  same  twelve.  You  would  find  that 
"so  many  men,  so  many  opinions,"  would  hold  good 
in  this  case.  It  would  seem,  then,  as  though  it  were 
impossible  to  agree  upon  a  standard  of  moral  per- 
fection, and  yet,  as  I  have  already  shown  you,  that 
is  not  so.  We  all  know  the  standard,  but  we  don't 
agree  about  its  manifestation.  We  do  not  agree 
as  to  which  man  is  living  up  to  the  morally  perfect 
ideal,  and  we  are  often  so  prejudiced  and  blind  that 
we  cannot  recognise  moral  worth  when  we  see  it. 
Supposing  you  apply  this  to  what  you  know  about 
Jesus.  I  could  imagine  some  one  saying  to  himself 
as  I  speak,  "But  how  do  you  know  that  your  de- 
scription of  a  sinless  character  really  is  a  description 
of  Jesus?  Is  not  the  moral  ideal  you  have  de- 
scribed one  that  we  have  superimposed  upon  Jesus  ? 
If  Jesus  came  to  London  to-day,  and  men  did  not 
know  it  was  Jesus,  would  they  agree  any  better  about 
Him  than  they  agree  about  anything  else?     Most 


74  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

of  all,  supposing  He  were  living  the  ideal  life,  as 
you  have  described  it,  the  life  of  love,  would  they 
see  it  ?  Would  they  not  rather  impugn  His  motives  ? 
would  they  not  misunderstand,  slander,  and  per- 
secute as  before?  They  would  not  nail  Him  to  a 
wooden  cross  —  for  we  have  had  nineteen  centuries 
of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  to  make  that  impossible  — 
but  they  would  find  other  ways  of  making  Him 
suffer  for  what  He  was."  I  know  all  that,  but  I 
want  to  point  out  to  you  thoughtful  men  and  women 
that  the  ideal  concerning  man  and  concerning  God, 
which  we  all  acknowledge  in  our  hearts  is  the  true 
one,  we  owe  to  Jesus :  He  brought  it.  He  hved  it ; 
humanity  did  not  invent  it.  Jesus  was  it;  and  it 
was  not  only  what  Jesus  said,  somehow  it  was  the 
personality  of  Jesus  Himself  that  declared  it.  Little 
children  and  sad  women  came  to  Him,  and  He  pro- 
tected them  in  a  time  when  women  were  persecuted, 
wronged,  despised.  Bad  men  slunk  out  of  His 
presence;  it  took  His  very  murderers  some  time 
before  they  dared  to  lay  haads  upon  Him.  Wonder- 
ful personality,  tremendous  in  its  impact  upon  the 
people  who  stood  nearest  to  it !  This  Jesus  was 
recognised  even  then,  in  spite  of  themselves,  by  the 
men  who  hated  Him,  as  morally  greater  than  them- 
selves. One  who  loved  Him  well  sank  down  on  his 
knees  in  a  moment  of  illumination,  and  said,  "De- 
part from  me,  for  I  am  a  sinful  man."  It  was  not 
so  much  what  Jesus  said,  important  as  that  was, 
which  has  been  the  message  of  Jesus  to  the  world. 


THE    SINLESSNESS    OF    JESUS  75 

it  was  Himself.  There  was  no  abstraction  here; 
no  abstract  ideal  has  ever  had  any  power  to  regen- 
erate mankind;  it  was  a  hving,  breathing  man, 
manifesting  an  ideal  good,  showing  Himself  able 
to  read  God,  as  men  were  never  able  to  read  Him 
before.  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  we  have  not  in- 
vented Jesus'  idea  of  God,  and  then  asked  ourselves 
whether  Jesus  was  like  it ;  the  process  has  been  the 
exact  reverse.  We  saw  Jesus,  and  then  we  saw 
what  God  must  be.  It  is  because  such  a  hfe  was 
ever  lived  that  men  have  come  to  think  of  God  as 
being  what  He  is,  a  God  of  love.  The  true  worth 
of  such  a  life  is  evidenced  by  the  standard  it  has 
created,  and  which  could  not  be  permanently  ob- 
scured by  prejudice. 

Let  me  put  another  point  strengthening  the  same 
position.  It  is  this,  though  I  cannot  prove  it,  and 
am  not  going  to  try :  Every  personality  must  be  at 
least  equal  to  its  own  achievements.  Some  of  you 
know  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  occasionally 
you  are  disappointed  when  you  first  come  face  to 
face  with  a  man  of  whom  you  have  heard  a  good 
deal;  somehow  he  is  not  quite  equal  to  what  you 
expected.  He  may  be  the  writer  of  a  great  book: 
in  that  book  you  feel  you  have  made  acquaintance 
with  a  soul  that  you  understand  and  that  under- 
stands you;  you  seek  out  the  writer,  and  when  at 
last  you  look  into  his  eyes,  and  clasp  his  hand,  you 
feel  there  is  something  missing  that  you  expected 
to  find:    he  is  not  quite  equal  to  the  achievement. 


76  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

You  know  that  in  reality  he  must  be,  else  he  never 
could  have  produced  the  book ;  but  there  is  the  fact, 
he  is  no  greater,  anyway.  On  the  other  hand, 
occasionally  one  comes  face  to  face  with  a  man  of 
whom  one  has  expected  something,  and  finds  more. 
Great  as  the  man  is,  you  would  say,  and  admirable 
as  his  work  has  been,  he  himself  is  greater  still; 
he  has  not  exhausted  himself,  there  are  unknown 
depths  suggested  there,  immense  moral  and  in- 
tellectual reserves.  In  history  things  have  a  way 
of  righting  themselves  in  this  regard.  For  centuries 
men  talked  about  Cromwell  as  though  he  had  been 
rebel,  regicide,  hypocrite  and  all  that  was  undesir- 
able. Then  in  the  nineteenth  century  we  suddenly 
woke  up  to  the  fact  that  he  was  not  these :  he  was 
one  of  the  greatest  Englishmen  that  ever  lived, 
one  of  the  greatest  benefactors  of  mankind  that 
this  country  has  produced.  So  we  went  to  the  other 
extreme,  and  called  him  all  the  good  names  we  could 
think  of.  Then  the  dispassionate  historian  comes 
along,  and  puts  the  great  Protector  in  his  right 
place.  He  was  not  immaculate  after  all;  he  was 
great,  but  he  was  human,  and  he  had  his  weaknesses. 
Americans  will  pardon  me  for  pointing  out  the  same 
thing  with  regard  to  the  father  of  their  country, 
as  they  call  George  Washington.  Nothing  is  too 
good  for  you  to  say  about  him,  nothing  was  too  bad 
for  his  contemporaries  to  say  about  him.  History 
has  a  way  of  restoring  the  equilibrium.  We  know 
just  where  to  put  George  Washington;    we  know 


THE   SINLESSNESS   OF   JESUS  77 

his  worth,  which  is  a  great  deal  more  than  that  of 
the  average  man ;  he  is  at  least  equal  to  his  achieve- 
ments. 

Now  what  about  Jesus?  Measure  Jesus  against 
any  of  the  masters  of  men,  and  ask  whether  He  is 
equal  to  His  achievements.  Jesus  has  given  us  God, 
as  some  one  has  beautifully  said;  Jesus  has  shown 
us  what  God  is,  not  merely  by  saying  it,  but  by  living 
it.  Jesus  has  been  the  maker  of  saints,  heroes, 
martyrs,  compared  with  whom  all  the  masters  of 
men  pale  into  insignificance.  Jesus  is  a  living  and 
ever-present  force.  Some  people  say  the  Churches 
are  dying,  their  influence  is  growing  less  and  less. 
Even  if  that  were  true  I  should  not  care  very  much, 
for  the  influence  of  Jesus  is  proportionately  rising. 
Men  have  not  done  with  Him,  and  do  not  want  to 
have  done  with  Him.  His  is  the  name  above  every 
name,  not  as  a  dream  or  a  distant  ideal,  but  as  an 
actual  fact.  A  great  man  wrote  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury words  we  can  repeat  to-day: 

Jesus,  the  very  thought  of  Thee 

With  sweetness  fills  my  breast, 
But  sweeter  far  Thy  face  to  see, 

And  in  Thy  presence  rest. 

We  have  not  got  beyond  what  Bernard  of  Clair- 
vaux  said  as  his  experience  of  Jesus  in  the  twelfth 
century;  we  are  saying,  seeing,  feeling  it  to-day. 
We  know  this  Jesus  —  man,  or  God,  or  both,  a 
transcendent  being,  the  moral  ideal,  the  conscience 


78  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

of  the  race,  our  leader  and  our  goal.  We  believe 
in  the  love  of  God  just  because  we  have  seen  one 
life  which  can  fairly  be  described  as  a  life  of  love. 
What  is  the  good  of  demonstrating  the  sinlessness 
of  Jesus?  What  is  the  good  of  saying,  Here  was 
the  one  human  life  lived  in  terms  of  the  love  of  God, 
and  manifesting  the  highest?  It  is  because  what 
He  was  we  are  meant  to  be.  Faith  in  Jesus  in- 
volves just  that ;  it  is  faith  in  God,  faith  in  love, 
faith  in  true  holiness,  faith  in  personal  self-surrender, 
faith  in  what  is  truest  in  yourself.  The  deepest  and 
holiest  in  you  is  the  expression  of  God.  You  are 
at  one  with  the  Father  now,  and  cannot  help  it. 
Realise  your  oneness  and  demonstrate  your  sonship. 
You  are  climbing  to  the  place  whereon  Jesus  dwelt 
even  on  earth;  that  is  why  God  sent  you  here. 
That  is  what  faith  in  Jesus  is  meant  to  produce, 
this  life  of  unbroken  harmony  with  the  ideal  good, 
which  is  God.  On  every  page  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment it  is  written  large.  Saul  of  Tarsus  was  a 
great  man,  and  he  did  a  great  thing  when  he  turned 
his  back  on  the  old  hardness  and  materialism  of  the 
religion  of  his  Pharisaic  upbringing  and  chose  Jesus, 
with  all  His  simplicity,  moral  dignity,  spiritual 
beauty ;  and  this  is  what  he  said  about  Him :  "Whom 
He  did  foreknow,  He  also  did  predestinate  to  be 
conformed  to  the  image  of  His  Son,  that  he  might 
be  the  firstborn  among  many  brethren.  .  .  .  Who 
shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of  Christ?  Shall 
tribulation,  or  distress,  or  persecution,  or  famine, 


THE   SINLESSNESS    OF   JESUS  79 

or  nakedness,  or  peril,  or  sword?  ...  I  am  per- 
suaded that  neither  death  nor  hfe,  nor  angels,  nor 
principalities,  nor  powers,  nor  things  present  nor 
things  to  come,  nor  height  nor  depth,  nor  any  other 
creation,  shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from  the  love 
of  God,  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord."  And 
the  writer  of  the  fourth  gospel,  the  man  who  put  on 
record  the  question  with  which  we  have  challenged 
the  world,  "Wliich  of  you  convicteth  me  of  sin?" 
says  this  also  about  Jesus :  "Behold  what  manner  of 
love  the  Father  hath  bestowed  us,  that  we  should 
be  called  the  sons  of  God."  Why,  that  is  what  we 
call  Jesus!  "And  it  is  not  yet  manifest  what  we 
shall  be;  but  we  know  that,  when  He  shall  appear, 
we  shall  be  like  Him;  for  we  shall  see  Him  as  He 
is." 


THE  GIFT  OF  THE  SON 

"God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His 
only  begotten  Son,  that  whosoever  believeth  in 
Him  should  not  perish,  but  have  everlasting 
life."  —  John  iii.  i6. 

This  great  saying  has  always  been  a  favourite 
with  Christian  preachers,  and  deservedly  so,  for 
in  a  sense  it  sums  up  the  Christian  evangel.  At 
the  present  day,  as  much  as  in  any  previous  age, 
it  supplies  the  text  for  innumerable  sermons,  es- 
pecially those  which  are  intended  as  an  urgent 
evangelical  appeal.  One  may  hear  this  text 
preached  from  at  street  comers  quite  as  frequently 
as  in  church.  In  fact,  the  greater  the  warmth  of 
evangelical  fervour  the  more  likely  is  this  passage 
to  form  the  basis  of  the  discourse. 

And  yet  the  curious  thing  about  the  matter  is  that 
this  statement  is  not  one  which  is  altogether  easy 
to  understand.  It  is  what  we  may  call  ethically 
obvious,  but  intellectually  obscure.  Probably  every 
preacher  who  handles  it,  from  an  archbishop  down 
(or  up)  to  a  Salvation  Army  captain,  perceives  in- 
stinctively the  moral  power  of  the  truth  it  contains, 
but  it  may  be  questioned  whether  he  always  knows 
just  what  the  writer  of  it  meant  by  his  use  of  terms. 
I  do  not  think  it  will  in  any  way  lessen  its  value  for 

80 


THE   GIFT    OF   THE    SON  8l 

US  if  we  attempt  to  make  that  inquiry  this  morning. 
Anyhow,  let  us  try. 

There  are  four  terms  which  demand  attention  — 
the  "world,"  the  "only-begotten  Son,"  the  verb 
"believeth,"  and  the  phrase  "everlasting  [or  eternal] 
life."  By  the  world  we  ought  here  to  understand 
the  totality  of  the  human  race  living  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  separateness  from  God.  The  only- 
begotten  Son  is  a  term  with  a  complex  history.  It 
has  become  Christianised,  but  it  antedates  Chris- 
tianity. The  writer  of  this  gospel  certainly  bor- 
rowed it  from  the  Alexandrian  school.  It  means  the 
eternal  Divine  Man  who  is  the  source  of  all  creation. 
I  must  say  a  little  more  about  this  thought  presently. 
For  the  moment  let  me  point  out  that  in  our  text, 
and  indeed  throughout  this  gospel,  the  writer  iden- 
tifies this  eternal  Divine  Man  with  Jesus.  I  need 
hardly  point  out  that  the  word  "  belie veth"  in  the 
New  Testament  means  a  great  deal  more  than  mere 
intellectual  assent  to  a  proposition;  it  involves  a 
moral  act,  the  committal  of  the  whole  personahty 
to  a  certain  spiritual  ideal.  We  are  short  of  a  word 
to  express  in  English  the  full  force  of  this  Greek 
word.  It  denotes  an  act  of  the  reason,  the  will,  and 
the  moral  nature  combined.  Nowhere  in  this  gospel 
does  the  writer  employ  the  noun  "faith";  he  uses 
the  verb  instead;  and,  as  we  have  in  English  no 
verb  "to  faith,"  we  have  to  translate  it  "to  believe." 
This  is  rather  awkward,  and  has  led  to  a  great  deal 
of  confusion.     Even  to-day  it  prevents  many  people 


82  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

from  seeing  that  "believing"  in  the  New  Testament 
sense  simply  means  rendering  complete  obedience 
to  the  highest  you  are  capable  of  understanding. 
Lastly,  by  "eternal  life"  is  here  meant  the  life  which 
is  love,  the  unchanging  life  of  God,  the  life  beyond  and 
above  all  the  illusions  of  time  and  sense,  the  life  which 
was  before  all  ages,  and  the  life  which  will  remain 
when  all  evil  is  swallowed  up  in  good  and  all  pain 
is  swallowed  up  in  joy. 

Now  that  we  have  an  approximately  accurate 
idea  as  to  the  meaning  of  our  terms,  let  us  look  at 
the  general  statement  in  which  they  are  contained, 
"God  so  loved  the  world,"  etc.  What  does  the 
average  church-goer  understand  these  words  to 
mean?  I  am  beginning  to  find  out  that  nothing 
exasperates  an  ordinary  Christian  much  more  than 
to  tell  him  in  plain  and  simple  English  what  he 
believes  or  thinks  he  believes  in  reference  to  God's 
dealings  with  the  world.  This  is  to  me  a  most 
curious  and  inexplicable  psychological  phenomenon, 
but  it  has  to  be  faced.  Now,  as  I  am  very  far  from 
wishing  to  exasperate  any  one,  will  you  allow  me  to 
say  at  this  point  that  the  only  way  of  understanding 
any  venerable  Scripture  statement  is  to  examine 
what  we  already  think  we  know  about  it,  and  then 
stand  apart  from  it,  as  it  were,  and  see  whether  it 
answers  to  the  facts  —  just  as  we  should  do  if  we 
were  examining  evidence  on  any  other  subject. 
In  plain  and  simple  English,  then,  what  the  ordinary 
sermon-hearer  thinks  about  the  statement  contained 


THE   GIFT    OF   THE    SON  83 

in  our  text  is  this :  God  loves  mankind,  but  mankind 
has  sinned  against  God.  This  sin  is  so  serious  that 
God  must  send  mankind  to  a  hell  of  everlasting 
torment  unless  some  means  can  be  found  of  atoning 
for  our  guilt.  This  means  has  been  found  in  the 
self-devotion  of  a  being  called  the  eternal  Son,  who 
is  God  Himself,  and  yet  is  somehow  different  from 
the  God  who  requires  the  sacrifice.  God  the  Father 
then  punishes  God  the  Son  in  order  that  mankind 
may  escape  this  everlasting  hell.  The  only  part 
mankind  has  in  the  matter  is  that  we  must  individ- 
ually "believe"  in  this  transaction  in  order  to 
benefit  by  it.  If  we  do  not  believe  we  are  doomed. 
This  is  a  plain  and  simple  summary  of  what 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  our  fellow  Christians 
hold  to-day  in  reference  to  the  truth  contained  in 
our  text.  They  never  look  the  facts  in  the  face, 
and  somehow,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  they 
become  very  angry  when  they  are  asked  to  do  so. 
The  fact  is  they  know  instinctively  that  there  is  a 
great  and  precious  truth  here,  and  they  are  unwilling 
to  tamper  with  the  forms  in  which  it  is  supposed  to 
be  presented,  lest  they  should  desecrate  or  lose  it. 
But  the  real  desecration  consists  in  holding  it  in  a 
form  which  dishonours  God,  "God  so  loved  the 
world."  If  this  be  true,  how,  under  any  circum- 
stances, can  He  doom  His  children,  or  any  one  of 
His  children,  even  the  worst  among  them,  to  an 
everlasting  hell?  Most  people  will  admit  this  nowa- 
days without  much  difficulty.     But  once  they  admit  it, 


84  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

it  seems  strange  that  they  do  not  immediately  see  that 
the  whole  fabric  which  they  call  the  scheme  of  sal- 
vation is  demolished.  If  salvation  consists  in  being 
saved  from  a  future  hell,  how  is  man  to  be  saved 
from  it  once  he  gets  there?  Conventional  explana- 
tions of  my  text  make  no  provision  for  this.  If 
repentance  is  not  enough,  without  the  infliction  of 
suffering  upon  some  third  party,  of  what  use  is  it 
to  talk  about  the  love  of  God?  No  one  has  ever 
yet  been  able  to  show  any  sensible  reason  why  God 
the  Father  should  torture  God  the  Son  in  order  to 
make  possible  the  forgiveness  of  the  sins  of  mankind. 
A  score  of  questions  at  once  emerge*  here  to  which 
no  answer  can  be  given  if  the  conventional  view 
of  the  subject  is  to  be  accepted.  But  one  thing  is 
quite  clear :  There  is  no  understandable  sense  — 
supposing,  I  say,  the  conventional  view  to  be  con- 
sistently maintained  —  in  which  God  the  Father 
really  gave  God  the  Son  for  the  salvation  of  the 
world.  Such  giving  could  have  cost  Him  nothing. 
Why  should  it  ?  If  the  whole  matter  were  summed 
up  in  the  suffering  of  Jesus  on  Calvary,  the  giving 
did  not  amount  to  much;  indeed,  it  did  not  amount 
to  anything.  No ;  these  statements  are  incoherent : 
they  do  not  help  us  in  the  least  when  once  we  look 
into  them;  they  only  serve  to  obscure  the  greatness 
of  the  subject.  When  we  look  at  the  question  rev- 
erently and  dispassionately  we  can  see  well  enough 
that  there  is  no  ground  in  common  justice  or  in 
common  sense  why  God  should  torture  any  one  for 


THE   GIFT   OF   THE   SON  8$ 

any  one  else's  sin;  nor  that  He  should  torture  any 
one  for  his  own  sin,  otherwise  than  for  his  good. 
If  God  is  really  and  truly  a  God  of  love,  His  whole 
object  in  His  dealings  with  men  must  be  to  save 
them  and  to  do  them  good.  He  can  have  no  other 
object.  There  is  no  abstract  justice  to  be  satisfied. 
He  is  not  thinking  of  punishing  sin,  but  of  saving 
the  sinner;  and  the  only  salvation  He  has  in  mind 
is  deliverance  from  the  sin  itself  into  the  fellowship 
of  love.  This  is  plain,  and  reasonable,  and  clear. 
There  is  no  mystery  about  it;  any  one  can  under- 
stand it;  and  there  is  no  one  in  the  wide  world 
who  can  consistently  deny  that,  whether  it  is  true 
or  not,  it  ought  to  be  true  if  God  is  love. 

Well,  now,  did  the  writer  of  our  text  see  this? 
Yes,  I  am  quite  sure  he  did,  although  the  forms  in 
which  he  expresses  the  truth  are  not  those  of  to-day. 
According  to  current  notions,  especially  among  the 
Jews,  in  the  time  in  which  this  writer  lived,  the  world 
would  have  to  be  destroyed,  as  being  at  enmity  with 
God.  These  people  were  not  thinking  of  salvation 
as  dehverance  from  a  future  hell  so  much  as  the 
purging  of  the  world  from  all  the  evils  that  afflicted 
the  children  of  God.  They  thought  of  the  Gentile 
world  as  essentially  opposed  to  God,  and  therefore 
certain  to  be  destroyed  when  the  cup  of  its  iniquity 
was  full.  If  they  had  put  into  words  their  thought 
about  the  matter,  it  might  have  been  expressed  thus : 
"God  so  hates  the  world  of  human  beings  that  He 
will   utterly   destroy   them   all   except   a   righteous 


86  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

remnant."  But  the  writer  of  our  text  saw  plainly 
that  the  religion  of  Jesus  gave  quite  another  view 
of  the  attitude  of  God  to  His  creation,  so  he  wrote 
"God  does  not  hate,  He  loves." 

But  he  did  not  stop  here.  He  went  on  to  show 
that  this  love  of  God  involved  a  kind  of  giving  of 
Himself,  an  acceptance  of  limitation  and  suffering 
in  order  to  liberate  men  from  the  bondage  of  evil. 
This  was  a  great  thought,  and  I  want  you  to  notice 
how  beautifully  he  works  it  out.  He  says,  "God 
sent  not  His  Son  into  the  world  to  condemn  the  world, 
but  that  the  world  through  Him  might  be  saved." 
Now  this  was  a  flat  contradiction  of  the  cuirent 
Jewish  idea.  According  to  the  Jews,  according  even 
to  such  a  man  as  John  the  Baptist,  the  very  purpose 
of  the  coming  of  the  Messiah  was  the  condemnation 
of  the  world :  all  the  enemies  of  God  were  to  be 
rooted  out,  and  the  good  alone  would  be  permitted 
to  live  on  eternally.  But,  says  the  writer  of  our 
text,  this  is  not  so  at  all.  The  Messiah  has  come. 
He  was  Jesus  the  crucified,  and  the  purpose  of  His 
coming  was  to  give  men  that  very  eternal  life  which 
the  Jew  says  they  are  not  to  have.  He  does  not 
come  to  condemn ;  He  comes  to  save.  Now  observe 
that  there  is  here  no  reference  whatever  to  a  future 
hell;  the  point  at  issue  is  whether  men  are  to  live 
with  God  or  whether  they  are  not.  Our  author 
distinctly  states  that  God  gave  Jesus  to  the  world 
in  order  that  they  should. 

Now  let  us  look  once  more  at  this  word  Son.     It 


THE   GIFT   OF   THE   SON  87 

is  plain  enough  that  this  man  means  Jesus  when  he 
speaks  of  the  Son  of  God,  but  does  he  mean  any- 
thing more?  Assuredly  he  does.  He  was  trained 
in  the  great  Alexandrian  school,  which  regarded  the 
Son  of  God  as  a  term  to  describe  God's  thought  as 
expressed  in  creation.  I  want  you  to  realise  here 
that  all  these  New  Testament  terms  are  really  very 
simple  if  we  only  get  the  writer's  point  of  view.  By 
the  Son  of  God  he  only  means  the  life  of  God  in  the 
soul  of  man;  he  means  God  Himself  as  expressed 
in  human  life.  Now,  everybody  can  see  that  we 
need  a  word  of  some  kind  to  denote  the  God  in  man. 
The  being  of  God  extends  infinitely  beyond  and 
above  this  finite  universe  of  ours,  where  we  cannot 
follow  or  trace  it ;  but  nowhere  is  the  being  of  God 
more  fully  present,  more  real  and  sacred,  than  in  the 
soul  of  man.  When  we  want  a  word  to  describe 
God  as  we  know  Him  in  human  life,  revealed  by 
human  truth  and  love,  we  can  call  Him  the  Son, 
but  after  all  we  only  mean  God  Himself.  This 
is  the  word  employed  in  the  Johannine  writings. 
The  term  "Son  of  God"  means,  in  this  gospel  and 
elsewhere,  God  as  revealed  in  human  nature.  There 
is  a  word  I  Hke  even  better,  and  that  is  the  word 
Paul  uses;  I  mean  the  word  Christ.  It  is  such  a 
warm,  tender,  beautiful  word,  because  of  its  associa- 
tion with  Jesus,  that  I  do  not  wonder  at  Paul  using 
it  or  that  Christians  love  it  so  much.  But  what  I 
want  you  to  see  is  that,  whether  we  speak  of  the  Son 
or  the  Christ,  we  mean  the  God  in  man,  God's  love 


88  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

in  man;  we  mean  all  the  God  in  man,  for  God  is 
one.  We  have  seen  that  God  supremely  in  Jesus. 
We  can  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  Jesus  was  and 
is  God  the  Son,  the  Christ,  the  fulhiess  of  the  God- 
head bodily,  but  then  we  must  remember  that  that 
same  God  is  in  all  humanity  too.  When  we  speak 
of  the  "only-begotten"  Son  we  must  remember 
that  there  is  but  one  God  after  all,  and  that  He  in- 
dwells all  humankind.  The  only-begotten  Son  is 
Divine  love  as  revealed  in  man.  It  is  the  same  God 
in  all  —  the  "only-begotten." 

Now  I  think  you  will  see  without  much  difficulty 
the  wider,  deeper,  more  spiritual  meaning  of  our 
beautiful  text.  God  is  always  giving  Himself  in 
man  for  man,  and  that  forth-giving  of  the  love  of 
God  is  the  salvation  of  the  world  from  sorrow  and 
sin.  Wherever  you  see  love  willingly  accepting 
pain  to  save  and  uplift  a  soul  from  the  lower  to  the 
higher,  you  see  God  at  work  gathering  His  children 
back  to  Himself.  This  is  a  real  giving,  a  giving 
that  costs  something.  God  suffers  and  achieves 
in  every  brave,  noble,  Christlike  thing  that  any  child 
of  His  has  ever  done  for  the  good  of  any  other. 
The  whole  mighty  process  is  epitomised  in  what 
Jesus  endured  on  Calvary,  and  before  He  came 
to  Calvary,  but  it  was  not  exhausted  there.  It  is 
going  on  to-day  as  grandly  as  ever,  sublime  in  its 
manifestations,  irresistible  in  its  effects. 

It  is  always  a  puzzle  to  me  that  men  do  not  see 
this  more  clearly.     They  will  readily  concede  that 


THE    GIFT    OF   THE    SON  89 

God  gave  us  Jesus,  but  they  do  not  seem  to  see 
with  equal  clearness  that  God  gave  Himself  in  Jesus, 
and  that  He  still  continues  to  give  Himself  in  every- 
thing worthy  of  Jesus  that  is  making  the  world  better, 
nobler,  kinder.  I  remember  reading  during  the 
South  African  war  that  the  greatest  deaths  were 
those  of  the  mothers  who  died  in  their  sons,  the 
greatest  gifts  were  those  of  the  mothers  who  gave 
their  sons,  the  keenest  anguish  was  that  of  the 
mothers  who  suffered  in  their  sons  for  the  sake  of 
England.  Here  is  a  figure  of  the  work  of  God  for 
the  world.  Try  to  see  how  true  and  beautiful  it  is. 
You  have  only  to  look  around  you,  and  you  can  see 
it  illustrated  any  day  in  almost  any  home  or  place 
of  business.  You  will  see  God  the  Father  manifest 
as  God  the  Son  for  the  redemption  of  the  world 
—  that  is,  you  will  see  the  Divine  reality  in  the  hum- 
blest task  that  is  bravely  and  unselfishly  done.  If 
you  have  felt  your  heart  stirred  to  pity  to-day  by 
the  sorrow  of  some  one  you  were  able  to  help,  you 
have  felt  the  presence  of  God  in  your  soul,  and  he 
whom  you  helped  felt  it  too.  If  some  one  you  know 
has  gone  wrong,  and  you  have  longed  to  follow  and 
save  him,  it  is  the  love  of  God  that  is  engaged  in  the 
quest.  If  you  have  believed  with  all  your  heart  in 
the  possibility  of  righting  a  shameful  wrong  which 
is  breaking  some  one's  heart,  you  have  been  able 
to  minister  eternal  life.  If  you  have  really  believed 
in  Christ,  you  must  have  been  manifesting  Christ; 
it  could  not  be  otherwise.     And  wherever  any  one 


90  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

has  to-day  given  glad  or  penitent  response  to  the 
truth  and  purity  of  another,  you  have  seen  the 
faith  that  works  by  love,  you  have  seen  the  mani- 
festation of  the  life  eternal.  Do  not,  I  beseech  you, 
make  light  of  this.  We  know  that  God  loves  the 
world  simply  because  we  see  that  love  expressed 
in  human  self-devotion  and  brotherly  kindness.  If 
you  do  not  iind  it  there  you  will  find  it  nowhere. 
This  is  verifiable,  unescapable  fact,  which  out- 
weighs all  the  theorising  in  the  world.  It  makes 
life  sacred  and  beautiful,  and  illumines  it  with  a 
Divine  radiance.  "God  so  loved  the  world" — ■ 
I  believe  it  when  I  hear  a  broken-hearted  mother 
praying  for  a  prodigal.  "He  gave  His  only-be- 
gotten Son"  —  I  believe  it  when  I  come  across  a 
surrendered  life,  a  Divine  activity  hke  that  of  the 
late  Dr.  Barnardo,  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  Jesus. 
"Whosoever  believeth  in  Him  shall  not  perish"  — 
how  could  they?  This  is  faith  in  love,  and  love 
is  the  ultimate  reality  of  all  existence.  "But  have 
eternal  Hfe"  —  Ah  yes;  '-'this  is  life  eternal:  that 
they  might  know  Thee,  the  only  true  God,  and  Jesus 
Christ,  whom  Thou  hast  sent." 

Some  one  made  a  most  illuminating  remark  to  me 
the  other  day.  It  was  this :  Most  of  the  blunders  of 
Christian  theology  have  been  due  to  the  fact  that 
no  woman  has  had  much  to  do  with  making  it. 
For  the  most  part  it  has  not  only  been  the  work  of 
men,  but  of  men  who  have  been  withdrawn  from 
intimate  touch  with  life.     To  a  great  extent  this 


THE   GIFT    OF   THE   SON  QI 

accounts  for  the  hardness  and  unreahty  of  dog- 
matic presentations  of  the  rehgion  of  Jesus.  These 
presentations  lack  the  very  element  which  was  most 
prominent  in  the  character  of  Jesus  Himself.  The 
power  of  Jesus  was  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  there 
was  so  much  of  the  woman  in  Him.  I  will  tell  you 
why  I  considered  this  remark  illuminating.  The 
feminine  possesses  more  of  the  self-giving  quahty 
than  the  masculine;  the  ego  is  less  intrusive.  A 
woman  is  able  to  sink  herself  entirely  in  the  well- 
being  of  another  in  a  way  that  is  seldom  true  of  a 
man.  What  the  world  needs  is  the  combination  of 
this  quality  with  masculine  strength,  as  it  was  in 
Jesus  in  such  a  unique  degree.  It  is  almost  a  pity 
that  we  think  so  much  of  God  in  terms  of  the  mas- 
culine only.  Even  this  word  "Son"  throws  us  upon 
that  line  of  suggestion,  and  its  true  significance  may 
be  weakened  thereby.  God  is  the  mother-heart 
of  the  universe.  If  you  want  a  symbol  for  Divine 
love,  the  nearest  we  can  get  to  it  is  mother-love. 
Yet  when  we  are  thinking  of  the  Divine  love  in 
man  we  call  it  the  "Son."  Perhaps  you  can  see  now 
why  I  prefer  the  word  Christ.  It  stands  for  the 
self-giving  of  God,  the  love  that  sinks  the  self  in  its 
object.  But  really  it  does  not  matter  much  what 
we  call  it,  so  long  as  we  see  it  for  what  it  is.  To 
believe  in  the  Divine  Son  is  to  believe  in  your  own 
divinity  and  in  the  divinity  of  all  mankind.  It  is 
to  believe  in  the  victory  of  love  in  the  human  heart. 
It  is  to  believe  in  the  one  God  who  indwells  all. 


92  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

It  is  to  believe  in  Jesus,  and  all  for  which  Jesus  stood. 
It  is  to  believe  in  the  life  eternal,  and  to  help  to 
mediate  it  to  sinful,  sorrowing  men.  Let  me  re- 
peat, and  urge  upon  you,  that  to  know  this,  and  give 
effect  to  it,  is  to  pass  from  darkness  to  hght;  it  is 
to  become  a  saviour.  "He  that  hath  the  Son  hath 
hfe,  and  he  that  hath  not  the  Son  of  God  hath  not 
life." 


SIN    AND    SALVATION 

"  And  thou,  child,  shalt  be  called  the  prophet 
of  the  Highest:  for  thou  shalt  go  before  the 
face  of  the  Lord  to  prepare  His  ways ;  to  give 
knowledge  of  salvation  unto  His  people  by  the 
remission  of  their  sins."  —  Luke  i.  76-7. 

This  passage  from  the  song  of  Zacharias  probably 
formed  part  of  a  primitive  Christian  hymn.  Several 
of  these  hynms  have  been  preserved  for  us  in  this 
particular  gospel,  and  very  beautiful  they  are  both 
in  form  and  spirit.  They  include  the  Magnificat, 
the  song  of  the  angels  on  Bethlehem's  hill,  and  the 
particular  song  of  Zacharias  which  is  our  text,  as 
well  as  the  pathetic  song  of  Simeon  in  the  Temple 
at  the  presentation  of  the  holy  child  Jesus.  This 
song  of  Zacharias,  whence  our  text  is  taken,  is  a 
particularly  fine  example  of  sacred  poetry.  In  sub- 
stance it  is  an  adaptation  of  Old  Testament  language 
to  New  Testament  ideas.  The  actual  date  of  its 
composition  we  have  no  means  of  judging,  beyond 
the  fact  that  it  must  have  been  earlier  than  the  gospel 
which  contains  it,  and  therefore  must  have  been  one 
of  the  first  definitely  Christian  hymns  ever  sung 
by  a  congregation.  The  particular  sentence  which 
forms  our  text,  therefore,  possesses  a  significance 
which  can  only  be  rightly  understood  by  getting 
93 


94  NEW  THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

into  the  atmosphere  of  Judaso-Christian  ideas,  the 
atmosphere  in  which  it  was  bom.  I  need  not  say 
much  about  the  personahty  of  the  child  about  whom 
these  words  are  supposed  to  have  been  spoken,  John 
the  Baptist.  Indeed,  there  is  some  probability 
that  originally  they  did  not  refer  to  John  the  Baptist 
at  all,  but  to  Jesus  Himself.  Nor  is  it  necessary 
to  dwell  upon  the  phrase  "Thou  shalt  go  before 
the  face  of  the  Lord."  This  is  an  Old  Testament 
idea,  based  no  doubt  upon  an  allusion  to  the  custom 
of  sending  heralds  in  front  of  the  cortege  of  an  Eastern 
monarch  to  announce  his  presence  to  his  people. 
The  real  value  of  this  part  of  our  text  consists  in  the 
statement  that  the  spiritual  man  is  the  way-maker  for 
God.  The  real  weight  of  the  text  rests  upon  the  two 
phrases,  "knowledge  of  salvation"  and  "remission 
of  their  sins."  If  we  can  get  at  the  meaning  of  these 
two  phrases  we  shall  clear  up  a  good  deal  of  the  con- 
fusion that  exists  in  the  minds  of  some  people  to- 
day concerning  the  relation  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ 
to  salvation  and  to  sin.  Let  us  take  the  first  of  these. 
What  does  the  writer  mean  by  "salvation"?  It 
might  perhaps  be  supposed  that  we  are  taking  this 
question  in  the  wrong  order ;  it  might  seem  that  his- 
torically as  well  as  in  everyday  experience  the  con- 
sideration of  sin  should  come  first  and  that  of  sal- 
vation afterwards.  "First  find  out  what  is  wrong," 
some  of  you  might  say,  "and  then  we  shall  know  best 
what  is  needed  to  put  it  right."  But,  strange  as  it 
may  seem  at  first  sight,  this  is  not  the  true  historical 


SIN   AND   SALVATION  95 

order  of  the  ideas,  neither  do  I  beheve  that  it  is  the 
true  psychological  one.     We  have  to  get  a  vision  of 
salvation  first,  and  then,  and  not  till  then,  we  shall 
be  able  to  understand  what  sin  is.     What  then  did 
the    Jews  of    Jesus'    day  understand   by  the   term 
"salvation"?    They    thought    of    it    as    primarily 
social  and  national,  and  not  individual ;  if  individual, 
it  was  only  so  in  the  sense  that  the  individual  was 
to  be  saved  for  the  sake  of  the  nation,  and  that  only 
those  individuals  were  to  be  destroyed  who  were  a 
hindrance  to  national  salvation.     The  salvation  thus 
looked  for  was  a  restoration  of  national  indepen- 
dence and  the  establishment  of  a  theocratic  kingdom 
of  righteousness,  prosperity,  peace,  and  joy.     In  this 
connection  the  words  of  the  second  Isaiah  were  often 
quoted :  "The  voice  of  him  that  crieth  in  the  wilder- 
ness. Prepare  ye  the  way  of  the  Lord,  make  straight 
in  the  desert  a  highway  for  our  God.     Every  valley 
shall  be  exaked,  and  every  mountain  and  hill  shall 
be  made  low ;  and  the  crooked  shall  be  made  straight, 
and  the  rough  places  plain:    and  the  glory  of  the 
Lord  shall  be  revealed,  and  all  flesh  shall  see  it 
together:    for  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken 
it."     That  is  what  they  meant  by  salvation;    and 
a  grand  idea  it  is,  although  it  was  very  often  crudely 
held  and  expressed  by  some  of  the  contemporaries 
of   Jesus.     They   seem  to  have  thought  that  this 
kind  of  salvation  would  be  realised  all  in  a  moment, 
as  it  were,  and  would  be  accompanied  by  a  drastic 
elimination  and  destruction  of  all  those  whose  way 


96  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

of  living  had  been  of  such  a  kind  as  to  render  them 
unfit  for  membership  in  an  ideal  commonwealth. 
At  all  previous  crises  in  the  national  history  of  the 
Jews  the  whole  nation  had  suffered  together,  good 
and  bad  alike,  on  account  of  the  vicious  habits  of 
certain  individuals.  Thus,  according  to  the  great 
preachers  called  prophets,  the  fall  of  Jerusalem 
before  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  the  carrying  away  of 
the  flower  of  the  people  into  captivity  in  the  great 
city  of  Babylon,  were  caused  by  the  self-indulgence 
and  unscrupulousness  of  large  numbers,  perhaps  the 
majority,  of  the  nation;  but  the  whole  nation  had 
to  suffer  as  a  consequence,  from  the  sovereign  down- 
wards. The  national  life  was  interrupted  for  a 
period  of  about  sixty  years,  and  this  period  was  after- 
wards regarded  as  having  been  a  time  of  death. 
It  is  in  allusion  to  this  that  such  statements  as  those 
of  Ezekiel  were  made  afterwards:  "The  soul  that 
sinneth  it  shall  die."  I  wonder  how  often  you 
have  heard  that  text  preached  from!  but  it  meant 
originally  in  the  mouth  of  the  man  who  uttered  it 
that  the  nation  as  a  whole  should  no  longer  be  com- 
pelled to  suffer  for  the  fauk  of  the  few ;  that  is,  the 
mischief-makers  should  suffer  as  the  result  of  their 
own  transgression,  not  the  nation  as  a  whole.  "The 
soul  that  sinneth  it  shall  suffer,  or  shall  die."  This, 
of  course,  is  a  rhetorical  statement,  for  no  man  ever 
does  live  a  bad,  selfish  life  without  hurtmg  other 
people.  But  this  statement,  and  others  like  it, 
greatly  influenced  later  Jewish  ideas  on  the  subject 


SIN   AND   SALVATION 


97 


of  national  deliverance.  When  God's  good  time 
came,  they  thought,  the  wicked  man  and  the  op- 
pressor would  be  cut  off,  and  the  purified  nation 
would  remain.  That  was  what  they  meant  by 
salvation. 

You  can  at  once  see  that  there  are  important  differ- 
ences between  this  idea  of  salvation  and  the  ordinary 
modern  connotation  of  the  term.  These  differences 
are  not  quite  so  deep  as  they  look,  but  they  ought 
not  to  be  ignored  or  passed  over.  Ask  any  revival 
convert  who  has  been  at  a  penitent  form  what  he 
means  by  saying  he  has  got  salvation,  and  I  think 
you  will  find  that  he  does  not  mean  what  these  Jews 
meant  in  Jesus'  day :  he  means  primarily  that  his 
eternal  welfare  has  been  secured,  and  that  he  is 
going  to  try  to  be  good  now  on  the  strength  of  that 
assurance.  But  the  Jew  was  not  thinking  about 
that  at  all.  He  was  thinking  of  a  regenerated  society, 
primarily  of  this  world,  or  rather  of  an  incoming 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to  this  world.  The  link 
between  two  conceptions  of  salvation,  the  Jewish 
one  and  that  of  conventional  Christianity  to-day 
—  for  there  is  a  link  —  is  that  both  centre  upon  the 
thought  of  goodness  in  some  form :  the  Jewish  one 
being  mainly  social,  the  conventional  Christian  one 
being  primarily  individual.  Now  here  is  a  thing 
which  must  not  be  lost  sight  of.  The  Jewish  idea 
of  the  meaning  of  salvation  at  its  best  was  almost 
identically  the  same  as  that  of  the  first  Christians. 
I  do  not  know  that  people  are  aware  of  that,  broadly 


98  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

speaking.  The  difference  between  the  two  was 
practical  rather  than  theoretical.  The  Christians 
inspired  by  Jesus  were  full  of  an  intense  moral  en- 
thusiasm, and  the  Jews  were  not;  that  was  all  the 
difference.  The  Christians  believed  as  earnestly 
as  the  most  patriotic  Jews  did  that  salvation  would 
come  speedily  and  would  be  national,  and  that  Jesus 
would  be  the  means  of  realising  it.  It  was  due 
mainly  to  the  Apostle  Paul  that  they  came  after- 
wards to  see  that  such  a  salvation  would  have  to  be 
world-wide,  and  include  all  servants  of  God  equally 
with  those  of  Jewish  race.  I  am  afraid  it  cannot 
honestly  be  maintained  that  the  primitive  Christian 
Church  as  a  whole  believed  in  a  world-salvation 
which  would  involve  the  destruction  of  none,  but 
rather  the  emancipation  of  all  from  the  thraldom  of 
evil.  I  believe  Jesus  thought  so,  but  few  if  any  of 
His  immediate  followers  did.  But  that  does  not 
matter  so  very  much  after  all;  what  does  matter  is 
that  we  should  see  that  primitive  Christianity  stood 
for  a  social  salvation  based  on  individual  faith  and 
love.  It  was  far  nearer  to  the  ideal  of  a  modem 
social  reformer  than  it  was,  say,  to  that  of  Dr. 
Torrey  and  his  followers.  I  am  passing  no  criticism 
upon  the  latter;  I  am  only  pointing  out  that  the 
Christian  conception  of  salvation  to-day  as  held  by 
the  ordinary  man  was  not  that  of  the  primitive  Chris- 
tian Church.  When,  therefore,  a  primitive  Chris- 
tian congregation  first  sang  the  beautiful  words  of 
our  text  they  were  expressing  the  conviction  that 


SIN   AND   SALVATION 


99 


Jesus  would  be  the  means  of  giving  salvation  to  the 
world  by  driving  out  of  it  all  cruelty,  oppression, 
sufifering,  want,  and  wickedness  —  the  incoming  of 
the  brightness  of  heaven  to  the  darkness  of  earth. 
The  man  who  wrote  my  text  was  thinking  that, 
and  that  was  precisely  what  he  meant. 

Now  that  we  have  got  a  fairly  clear  idea  of  the 
meaning  of  the  word  salvation,  let  me  ask  you  to 
inquire  into  the  significance  of  the  word  "sin." 
The  writer  says  the  knowledge  of  salvation  is  to  be 
given  in  the  remission  of  sins.  Here  we  are  cer- 
tainly nearer  to  the  modem  conception  of  the  mean- 
ing of  a  New  Testament  term,  but  it  would  be  wise 
to  get  behind  both  and  to  get  rid  of  all  artificialities 
as  far  as  we  can  in  our  use  of  the  word  sin.  Jewish 
religious  literature,  even  the  earliest,  says  a  great  deal 
about  sin.  You  cannot  read  the  Bible  without 
finding  that  out.  But  the  content  of  the  word  as  set 
forth  in  our  English  version  of  the  Scriptures  is  not 
always  quite  the  same.  There  are  at  least  half  a 
dozen  Hebrew  words  translated  in  the  Scriptures 
by  the  English  word  "sin."  I  have  not  time  to 
examine  these  separately,  nor  is  there  any  need  to  do 
so ;  what  we  ought  to  recognise  here  is  that  the  con- 
ception of  sin  was  a  slow  growth,  and  at  first  had 
very  little  ethical  content.  Broadly  speaking,  in 
the  earhest  times,  not  only  among  the  Jews,  but 
among  all  Semitic  nations,  such  as  the  Assyrians 
and  Babylonians,  sin  meant  anything  which  could 
be  regarded  as  an  offence  against  the  Deity.     The 


lOO  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

Deity  was  thought  of  as  being  possessed  more  or 
less  by  ordinary  human  passions.  It  was  possible 
to  offend  Him  without  knowing  why,  just  as  though 
He  were  a  human  being.  You  know  how  often 
and  how  easily  possible  it  is  at  the  present  day 
to  upset  an  ordinary  man  without  knowing  why 
or  how  you  are  to  blame;  this  is  just  the  way 
in  which  the  primitive  Israelite  thought  about  God. 
He  was  great,  and  high,  and  terrible,  but  He  was 
apt  to  be  somewhat  uncertain,  whimsical,  and  ready 
to  blaze  out  into  anger  on  the  slightest  provocation. 
It  was  possible  to  offend  Him  without  knowing  how 
it  had  been  done,  and  without  being  conscious  of 
having  done  anything  which  we  now  look  upon  as 
being  morally  wrong.  If  you  will  read  the  Old 
Testament  with  your  eyes  open  you  will  soon  see 
that  that  statement  is  correct.  To  sin  against  God 
in  the  primitive  sense  of  the  word  did  not  necessarily 
mean  that  the  sinner  had  anything  to  reproach  him- 
self with  beyond  the  fact  that  he  had  put  himself 
by  a  piece  of  foolishness  outside  the  protection 
of  Jehovah,  through  not  having  been  sufficiently 
careful  about  Jehovah's  wishes  and  intentions. 

As  time  went  on,  however,  the  ethical  content  of 
the  word  became  deepened  and  purified.  Men 
began  to  feel  that  Jehovah  was  a  God  who  wanted 
righteousness  in  His  followers.  Great  preachers 
called  prophets  urged  this  upon  their  hearers  con- 
tinually. It  is  the  peculiar  glory  of  Israel  that  she 
could  produce  men  like   Isaiah  the  first  and  the 


SIN   AND   SALVATION  lOI 

second,  and  men  of  the  moral  quality  of  Elijah  and 
Elisha.  These  men  brought  the  soul  of  the  nation 
right  again  and  again,  and  elevated,  purified,  and 
ennobled  the  moral  ideal.  Their  conception  of 
righteousness  never  seems  to  have  been  so  high  and 
noble  as  that  vv^hich  was  aftervi^ards  given  to  the 
world  by  our  Lord  Jesus,  but  it  prepared  the  way 
for  His.  It  was  an  enormous  gain  for  religion 
when  men  began  to  realise  that  God  and  the  eth- 
ical ideal  were  one  and  the  same.  The  ethical 
ideal  might  be  inadequate,  imperfect,  restricted,  in 
so  far  as  they  were  able  to  see  it,  but  still  it  was  the 
ideal;  the  servants  of  God  had  their  faces  towards 
the  light.  To  talk  about  an  ideal  at  all  meant  a 
great  deal  in  rehgious  experience  and  religious  his- 
tory. They  had  in  their  minds  the  thought  of  an 
abstract  right  which  was  also  the  will  of  God,  and 
this  thought  became  a  passion  with  them.  Every- 
thing which  fell  below  this  ideal  they  termed  "sin." 
The  word  "sin,"  therefore,  began  to  take  on  a  some- 
what different  meaning  from  what  it  had  originally 
borne.  Sometimes  the  particular  sin  might  be  a 
rather  trivial  and  insignificant  matter,  as  we  should 
now  judge,  but  the  great  point  about  it  was  that  it 
was  held  to  be  wrong  in  itself,  and  that  God  dis- 
approved of  it  just  because  it  was  wrong  in  itself, 
and  not  merely  because  it  happened  to  offend  Him 
when  He  was  in  a  particularly  unpleasant  mood. 
It  was  an  important  moment  in  human  history  when 
that    conception    first    emerged.     No    language    of 


f^-. 


I02  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

ours  to-day  could  in  sincerity  and  depth  of  feeling 
exceed  on  this  subject  Psalm  xli. :  "Have  mercy 
upon  me,  O  God,  according  to  Thy  loving-kindness : 
according  unto  the  multitude  of  Thy  tender  mercies 
blot  out  my  transgression.  ...  I  acknowledge 
my  transgressions,  and  my  sin  is  ever  before  me. 
Against  Thee,  Thee  only  have  I  sinned,  and  done 
this  evil  in  Thy  sight.  .  .  .  Create  in  me  a  clean 
heart,  O  God,  and  renew  a  right  spirit  within  me." 
We  have  never  got  beyond  the  exalted  feeling  ex- 
pressed in  that  sublime  language. 

But  all  through  religious  history  there  has  run  a 
tendency  towards  artiiiciality  in  regard  to  the 
religious  ideal.  This  has  been  just  as  plainly 
marked  in  Christian  as  in  Jewish  history.  It  is 
to  be  seen  in  our  midst  to-day.  We  are  not  always 
real  when  we  talk  about  sin.  A  man  will  allow 
you  to  say  things  about  him  and  everybody  else  in 
church,  and  he  will  say  things  about  himself,  that 
he  would  sue  you  for  if  you  said  them  the  next  day 
in  the  ordinary  course  of  business.  This  has  been 
just  as  plainly  marked,  I  say,  in  Christian  as  in 
Jewish  history.  No  sooner  has  any  advance  been 
made  in  ethical  perception  than  the  new  word  has 
become  institutionalised  and  the  soul  has  died  out 
of  it.  Never  has  this  been  more  so  than  in  the 
time  of  Jesus.  The  word  "sin"  was  always  on  the 
lips  of  His  contemporaries,  particularly  those  of  the 
priestly  and  Pharisaic  order.  They  called  Him 
a  sinner  often  enough,  and  as  a  sinner  they  crucified 


SIN    AND    SALVATION  I03 

Him  in  the  end.  Their  list  of  possible  sins  became 
indefinitely  long.  They  were  always  busy  with 
"Thou  shalt  not,"  Many  of  the  things  they  stig- 
matised as  wrong  had  no  moral  meaning  of  any  sort 
or  kind.  It  was  wrong  to  do  this  and  wrong  to  do 
that :  the  disciples  of  Jesus  must  not  pluck  the  ears 
of  corn  on  the  Sabbath ;  Jesus  must  not  heal  withered 
hands  on  that  day ;  this  action  might  be  performed, 
but  another  very  like  it  was  not  lawful,  and  so  on. 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  words  of  this  Jesus,  who 
was  so  gentle  with  little  children  and  erring  women, 
descended  with  scathing  force  upon  these  blind 
leaders  of  the  blind?  They  had  artificialised  the 
moral  ideal,  and  were  deceiving  people  by  their 
language  about  it;  they  had  robbed  the  word  "sin" 
of  all  moral  value ;  they  had  lost  sight  of  true  right- 
eousness in  their  pursuit  of  legal  righteousness. 

The  word  "sinner"  in  the  mouth  of  a  Pharisee 
became  simply  a  technical  term  to  be  applied  to 
people  who  were  too  busy  or  too  indifferent  to  keep 
to  all  the  details  of  the  Jewish  law.  The  most 
malignant  taunt  they  could  level  against  the  disciples 
of  Jesus  was  this :  "Your  Master  eateth  and  drinketh 
with  publicans  and  sinners^' — that  is,  not  neces- 
sarily with  bad  people,  but  people  who  did  not  go 
to  the  synagogue,  people  who  did  not  keep  the  Jew- 
ish law.  "Publicans  and  harlots,"  said  Jesus  in 
reply,  "go  into  the  kingdom  of  God  before  you" 
—  for  at  least  they  are  simple  and  sincere,  which 
vou  are  not. 


I04  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

What  to  us  is  meant  by  sin?  What  is  salvation? 
And  how  do  we  stand  in  regard  to  both?  The 
answer  to  these  questions  can  only  be  obtained  by 
getting  into  living  sympathy  with  the  spirit  of  this 
Jesus,  who  somehow  or  other  has  come  to  be  to  the 
whole  civilised  world  the  expression  of  the  moral 
and  spiritual  ideal.  I  do  not  suppose  that  I  address 
any  one  who  would  deny  the  crown  rights  of  Jesus 
in  that  regard.  Let  us  get  back  to  Him  and  see 
what  He  meant;  let  us  sweep  away  with  a  firm 
hand  all  the  mischievous  accretions  which  have 
gathered  round  the  conceptions  of  sin  and  salvation. 
All  possible  activities  of  the  human  soul  are  between 
two  poles  —  selfishness  on  the  one  hand,  love  on  the 
other.  Every  conceivable  act  or  thought  is  the 
expression  of  one  or  other  of  these  two.  The  selfish 
man  is  the  man  who  tries  to  live  for  himself  at  the 
expense  of  the  whole  or  even  at  the  expense  of  some- 
body else.  Self-gratification  is  guilt  when  it  is  in- 
dulged in  at  another  man's  cost.  No  man  is  jus- 
tified in  inflicting  pain  upon  another  except  for  an 
impersonal  end.  To  serve  oneself,  feed  oneself, 
glorify  oneself,  satisfy  oneself,  at  the  cost  of  other 
people  and  at  the  cost  of  the  race  as  a  whole,  is  what 
Jesus  meant  by  sin.  Sin  inflicts  no  injury  upon 
God  except  through  man.  Any  deed  which  limits, 
hinders,  circumscribes  from  a  selfish  motive  the  well- 
being  of  mankind  or  any  portion  of  mankind  is  sin. 
Look  for  the  motive,  and  you  have  found  the  thing. 
On  the  other  hand,  love  means  both  more  and  less 


SIN   AND   SALVATION 


105 


in  the  mouth  of  Jesus  than  it  means  to  many  of  us 
to-day.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  told  us  in  the  City 
Temple  one  night  that  he  did  not  like  the  word 
love;  his  experience  of  stage  plays  made  him  dis- 
trust it  as  the  medium  for  the  expression  of  moral 
and  religious  ideals.  But  why  should  we  give  that 
word  away?  The  word  does  not  mean  weak, 
maudlin  sentiment,  nor  ought  it  to  be  associated 
with  stormy,  selfish  passion;  it  is  the  lifeward  im- 
pulse in  human  hearts;  it  is  the  perception  of  the 
essential  oneness  of  all  mankind,  and  the  desire 
to  do  something  to  realise  that  oneness.  Every 
deed  dehberately  done,  not  for  oneself  alone,  but 
for  some  one  else  or  for  mankind,  is  a  deed  of  love, 
even  though  it  may  have  very  little  sentiment  about 
it.  You  men  who  are  going  back  to  your  hard  work 
to-morrow  morning  would  be  the  last  to  wish  me 
to  speak  of  you  as  expressions  of  the  moral  ideal 
called  love,  but  to  a  certain  extent  you  are.  Every 
honest  effort  you  put  forth  to  do  good  work  for  the 
world  is  a  deed  of  love.  You  fathers  of  families 
who  work  eight  or  ten  hours  out  of  every  waking 
day  are  expressing  some  aspect  of  eternal  love. 
Did  you  ever  think  of  that  before?  The  ordinary 
commonplace  task  to  which  you  give  your  time  and 
strength  is  not  done  for  yourself  alone;  you  are 
doing  it  for  the  sake  of  the  little  mouths  you  have 
to  feed  and  for  the  wife  you  love  so  well.  In  pro- 
portion as  your  own  self-interest  and  desire  for  your 
own  comfort  and  success  are  lost  in  that  of  the  whole 


Io6  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

you  are  expressing  some  aspect  of  eternal  love. 
The  ideal  life,  the  life  of  love,  is  the  life  which  sees 
the  parts  as  parts,  but  with  a  feeling  of  the  whole. 
The  worst  man  that  ever  lived  is  capable  of  giving 
expression  to  that  ideal  in  some  degree,  and  the  best 
has  never  done  it  all  the  time.  In  so  far  as  we  are 
able  to  judge,  the  only  life  which  ever  did  it  all  the 
time,  the  one  perfectly  impersonal  life  that  was  ever 
lived,  was  the  life  of  Jesus.  Surely  the  instinct  of 
mankind  must  be  right  in  recognising  that  the  life 
and  character  of  Jesus  were  the  consistent  expres- 
sion of  this  moral  ideal,  the  will  to  live  not  for  self, 
but  for  the  whole,  and  therefore  for  God.  Until 
men  had  seen  that  life  lived  they  were  not  even  able 
to  see  what  sin  was.  "Depart  from  me,"  cried  the 
Apostle  Peter,  "for  I  am  a  sinful  man,  O  Lord!" 
The  presence  of  this  great  ideal  embodied  in  Jesus 
was  a  rebuke  to  this  poor  simple  fisherman  of  Gali- 
lee, as  it  has  been  a  rebuke  to  many  thousands  since. 
Now,  it  is  a  striking  thing  that  Jesus  very  seldom 
used  the  word  sin.  I  suppose  it  was  used  so  much 
by  the  Scribes  and  the  Pharisees  that  He  could 
hardly  bear  to  take  it  upon  His  lips.  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  wanted  to  get  men  to  concentrate 
their  thought  upon  their  weaknesses  and  their 
wrongdoings,  but  upon  the  will  of  God;  that  is, 
upon  the  Christian  ideal,  the  eternal  truth  that  God 
is  love.  Therefore,  although  He  spoke  little  about 
sin,  He  said  a  great  deal  about  love.  "Woe  unto 
you,  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  for  ye  tithe  mint  and 


SIN    AND    SALVATION  107 

rue  and  all  manner  of  herbs,  and  pass  over  judgment 
and  the  love  of  God.  These  ought  ye  to  have  done, 
and  not  to  leave  the  other  undone."  "Ye  have 
heard  that  it  hath  been  said.  Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbour  and  hate  thine  enemy.  But  I  say  unto 
you.  Love  your  enemies,  bless  them  that  curse  you, 
do  good  to  them  that  hate  you,  and  pray  for  them 
that  dcspitefully  use  you  and  persecute  you;  that 
ye  may  be  the  children  of  your  Father  which  is  in 
heaven;  for  He  maketh  His  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil 
and  on  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and 
on  the  unjust."  This  is  living  the  individual  life 
in  terms  of  the  whole  with  a  vengeance,  is  it  not? 
We  have  not  got  to  that  yet  by  a  long  way.  Most 
of  us  cannot  deserve  the  pathetic  absolution  of  the 
woman  who  was  a  sinner,  the  despised  and  abhorred 
of  all  the  respectable  then  as  now :  "Her  sins  which 
are  many  are  forgiven,  for  she  loved  much."  I  pre- 
fer justification  by  love  to  justification  by  faith; 
in  fact,  the  two  are  one  if  we  understand  them 
rightly. 

Again,  and  most  of  all  in  the  fourth  gospel,  the 
ideal  of  Jesus  is  set  forth  as  a  gospel  of  love:  "He 
that  loveth  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  he  that  hateth 
his  life  in  this  world  shall  keep  it  unto  life  eternal." 
Always  the  same  thing  to  Jesus  —  the  true  life  was 
the  hfe  consistently,  purposefully  lived  under  the 
guidance  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  the  life  that  was  lived 
in  terms  of  the  whole.  There  is  no  other  salvation 
worthy  of  the  name.     To  get  rid  of  sin  is  to  become 


Io8  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

a  saviour ;  you  cannot  help  it.  Poor,  frail,  ordinary, 
everyday  humanity  will  be  a  long  time  in  reaching 
this  ideal  in  its  fullness,  but  to  try  with  the  confidence 
that  God  wants  you  to  try  is  to  have  found  salvation. 
What  more  do  we  want  than  this  ?  It  is  so  extremely 
simple  that  men  have  always  been  trying  to  add  to 
it  or  take  from  it.  "Master,  if  the  prophet  had 
bidden  Thee  do  some  great  thing,  wouldst  Thou 
not  have  done  it?"  Scholastic  theologians,  with 
their  elaborate  doctrine  of  sin,  have  missed  the  point 
half  the  time :  they  have  represented  God  as  fiercely 
angry  with  His  poor  wayward,  erring  children,  none 
blinder  than  themselves.  And  yet  He  is  so  strong 
and  we  are  so  weak,  it  seems  hardly  worth  while 
on  the  part  of  the  Author  of  the  universe  to  take 
us  so  seriously  as  to  torture  or  destroy  us  for  our 
pitiful  failures :  would  it  not  have  been  better  news 
to  tell  us  that  His  own  love  shall  yet  swallow  up  and 
destroy  all  our  selfishness  ?  Of  course  it  would,  and 
that  is  exactly  what  Jesus  has  shown  us.  Indeed, 
it  is  what  some  people  did  before  Him,  although 
their  vision  was  not  so  clear  about  it  as  His. 

Make  no  mistake,  therefore :  sin  is  selfishness, 
and  salvation  is  love,  whether  here  or  anywhere 
beyond.  Sin  leads  to  pain,  love  leads  to  joy;  sin 
inflicts  pain  to  serve  itself,  love  willingly  accepts 
pain  to  save  others ;  sin  makes  for  death,  love  makes 
for  life;  sin  is  darkness,  love  is  light;  sin  is  finite, 
love  is  infinite;  sin  is  selfhood,  love  is  God.  It  is 
false  to  preach  that  all  men  are  equally  guilty  before 


SIN   AND   SALVATION 


[09 


God  or  in  their  own  consciousness,  although  it  may 
be  that  the  worst  sinner  as  the  world  sees  him  is 
not  so  very  bad  as  God  sees  him.  Religious  people 
mourn  that  the  world  is  troubling  less  and  less  about 
sin.  But  it  is  not  true;  nothing  of  the  kind.  Al- 
though we  do  not  employ  the  generic  term  so  often 
(which  perhaps  is  a  good  thing),  we  say  more  plainly 
what  we  mean,  and  it  is  only  in  church  that  we  talk 
in  vague  and  general  terms  about  sin.  Murder  is 
sin,  hate  is  sin,  lust  is  sin,  selfishness  is  sin,  unchari- 
table judgment  is  sin.  All  the  things  which  make 
men  unhappy  without  lifting  them  a  step  nearer 
God  are  due  to  selfishness,  and  that  is  sin. 

Here,  my  friends,  is  your  gospel:  Jesus  came  to 
save  you  and  me  from  this  death-dealing  thing,  and 
to  show  us  the  more  excellent  way.  He  lived  it 
Himself,  and  they  nailed  Him  on  Calvary  for  it; 
but  His  ideal  has  power  to-day,  just  because  He 
did  not  shrink  from  Calvary  as  the  price  He  had  to 
pay  for  declaring  it.  There  is  no  unhappy  man  or 
woman  in  this  world  to-day  but  is  suffering  in  some 
way  from  the  power,  the  wholly  illusory  power,  of 
this  dread  enemy  of  the  race.  Either  your  own 
selfishness  or  somebody  else's  has  been  working  you 
harm.  Realise  at  once  that  it  is  not  true  that  you 
need  to  remain  the  victim  of  the  base  and  unworthy 
things  in  hfe.  You  were  meant  for  God.  You  can 
escape  from  self  with  all  its  cruel  desires;  you  can 
rise  into  oneness  with  that  higher  self  which  is  life 
indeed,  because  it  is  eternal  love.     Do  not  believe 


no  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

that  any  one  can  stop  you  from  doing  this,  for  it  is 
the  will  of  God  that  you  should  do  it,  and  the  spirit 
of  Christ  is  with  you  in  every  endeavour  to  break 
your  chains.  This  is  the  knowledge  of  salvation, 
and  nothing  less  than  this  has  ever  been  worthy 
to  be  called  salvation.  "God  is  love,  and  he  that 
dwelleth  in  love  dwelleth  in  God,  and  God  in  him." 


FROM    DEATH    TO    LIFE 

"  For  the  wages  of  sin  is  death ;  but  the 
gift  of  God  is  eternal  life  through  Jesus  Christ 
our  Lord."  —  Rom.  vi.  23. 

This  well-known  passage  from  the  writings  of  St. 
Paul  has  formed  the  text  of  many  a  Christian  dis- 
course, and  rightly  so,  for  it  sets  forth  in  succinct 
form  the  great  Apostle's  thought  concerning  the 
change  from  the  dominion  of  sin  to  the  new  life 
in  Christ.  It  is  difficult  to  keep  a  subject  hke  this 
absolutely  clear  from  doctrinal  prepossessions; 
I  hope,  however,  that  we  may  be  able  to  do  so  to- 
night, for  I  think  we  shall  find  something  here  of 
considerable  value,  and  both  reasonable  and  helpful 
to  ordinary  everyday  experience. 

First,  let  me  ask  you  to  recall  what  you  already 
think  about  this  passage;  then  let  us  see  whether 
there  is  good  ground  for  supposing  that  this  is  what 
St.  Paul  meant;  and  after  that  let  us  see  what  our 
own  acquaintance  with  everyday  life  has  to  teach 
us  as  to  the  rightness  or  wrongness  of  the  views  here 
expressed.  I  think  I  know  pretty  well  what  the 
average  churchgoer  thinks  in  regard  to  this  passage 
and  others  like  it.  It  is  something  like  this.  He 
thinks  it  must  mean  that  somehow  or  other  we  are 


112  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

all  bad  to  begin  with  —  so  bad  that  in  a  future  state 
the  justice  of  God  must  effect  our  destruction  in 
some  way.  Some  people  would  say  that  the  word 
"death"  here  is  equivalent  to  annihilation.  Others 
would  hold  that  it  should  be  understood  as  meaning 
eternal  banishment  from  the  presence  of  God,  a 
banishment  which  will  be  accompanied  by  the  fires 
of  retribution.  It  is  not  one  here  and  there,  we 
are  told,  who  shall  incur  this  fate,  but  the  whole 
human  race.  There  is  one  way  of  escaping  it,  and 
only  one  —  namely,  faith  in  the  redeeming  work  of 
our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.  I  must  not 
enter  into  the  question  as  to  what  that  redeeming 
work  has  been  held  to  be,  for  I  cannot  spare  the 
time  just  now.  The  supposition  is  that  somehow 
by  His  death  on  Calvary  Jesus  has  put  everything 
all  right  for  us,  so  far  as  God  is  concerned,  if  we  will 
only  accept  the  deliverance  as  a  free  gift. 

Do  you  think  this  is  what  St.  Paul  meant  ?  I  am 
speaking,  of  course,  of  the  ordinary  conventional 
interpretation  of  the  text.  Do  you  think  that  this 
is  what  the  Apostle  means  us  to  infer  from  his  words  ? 
If  it  were  it  would  prove  him  to  be  a  rather  foolish 
sort  of  person,  and  not  at  all  the  great  man  that 
Christians  have  hitherto  believed  him  to  be.  For 
comparatively  few  in  the  history  of  mankind  have 
ever  heard  of  this  redeeming  work  of  Jesus,  much 
less  accepted  it.  In  Paul's  own  day  the  whole 
civilised  world  was  in  ignorance  of  it  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  few  groups  of  Christians  here  and  there. 


FROM    DEATH    TO    LIFE  II3 

Do  you  think  Paul  had  forgotten  this?  Of  course 
he  had  not.  If  admission  into  heaven,  if  escape  from 
the  fires  of  retribution  and  eternal  banishment  from 
the  presence  of  God,  depended  upon  the  intellectual 
acceptance  of  some  particular  doctrine  of  the  re-, 
deeming  work  of  Christ,  then  St.  Paul  was  teaching 
something  unreasonable,  for  the  overwhelmingly 
larger  number  of  the  human  race  had  never  even 
heard  of  it.  Whatever  he  may  have  meant  by  this 
sentence,  then,  he  certainly  did  not  mean  what  his 
interpreters  have  since  come  to  teach  in  his  name. 
Well,  what  did  he  mean?  To  begin  with,  it  is 
pretty  clear  to  an  unprejudiced  reader  of  the  New 
Testament  that  St.  Paul  thought  of  physical  death 
as  having  come  into  the  world  as  the  direct  conse- 
quence of  the  sin  of  our  first  parents.  He  says  this 
over  and  over  again.  "As  by  one  man  sin  entered 
into  the  world  and  death  by  sin  .  .  .  and  so  death 
passed  upon  all  men,"  and  so  on.  But  he  does  not 
remain  faithful  to  this  literal  interpretation  of  what 
he  conceived  to  be  the  meaning  of  a  great  spiritual 
truth.  He  glides  easily  into  a  mystical  interpretation 
of  the  same  fact,  and  thinks  about  death  as  meaning 
something  quite  other  than  mere  physical  death. 
He  uses  the  word  in  a  moral  sense.  When  he  says 
"The  wages  of  sin  is  death,"  he  means  the  death 
of  soul,  the  death  of  that  which  is  good  in  human 
experience,  the  choice  of  that  which  is  the  very 
opposite  of  the  eternal  life  which  Jesus  came  to 
reveal.     If  you  read  the  context  of  these  words  you 


114  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

will  soon  see  what  he  means.  Speaking  about  cer- 
tain sins  of  the  flesh,  he  says,  "What  profit  had  ye 
then  in  those  things  whereof  ye  are  now  ashamed?" 
and  adds,  "the  end  of  those  things  is  death."  Then 
without  a  pause  he  goes  on  to  utter  the  words  of  our 
text:  "The  wages  of  sin  is  death,  but  the  gift  of 
God  is  eternal  life  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord." 
Here  you  see  then  from  the  context  St.  Paul  is 
speaking  of  sin  in  general,  and  illustrating  it  by  a 
reference  to  sins  of  the  flesh.  He  wrote  this  letter 
at  a  time  and  to  a  society  where  sins  of  this  kind  were 
specially  prevalent.  I  need  hardly  remind  you  that 
he  was  writing  to  Romans.  At  this  time  Rome  was 
not  only  the  capital  of  the  great  empire  called  by 
that  name,  but  the  very  centre  of  civilisation  itself. 
Roman  luxury  had  developed  an  extraordinary 
proneness  to  sensuality,  a  sensuality  which  was 
gradually  destroying  the  manhood  of  the  Latin  race, 
and  led  in  time  to  the  overthrow  of  that  world-wide 
empire  in  which  St.  Paul  himself  was  a  subject. 
This  sensuality  showed  itself  in  various  forms,  some 
of  them  wholly  unmentionable  in  an  audience  of 
this  kind.  In  the  Meditations  of  the  great  stoic 
Emperor,  Marcus  Aurelius,  for  instance,  you  will 
find  a  reference  to  his  foster-father,  Antoninus  Pius, 
in  which  the  latter  is  praised  for  many  virtues, 
amongst  them  being  the  fact  that  he  had  managed 
to  overcome  all  tendency  towards  a  particular  and 
unnameable  form  of  sensual  vice.  Imagine  that 
being  said  now  as  to  the  credit  of  a  great  man ! 


FROM    DEATH    TO    LIFE  I15 

Marcus  seems  to  have  thought  that  this  was  so 
exceptional  as  to  be  noteworthy  in  a  man  he  loved 
and  reverenced  as  a  father.  You  can  imagine,  then, 
what  the  general  state  of  Roman  society  must  have 
been.  At  this  time  amongst  the  worst  and  most 
heartless  promoters  of  this  evil  were  highly  placed 
Roman  ladies.  This  was  the  most  sinister  sign  of 
the  times,  as  Tacitus  shows  us  in  his  "Germania," 
where  he  describes  the  habits  of  our  barbarian  fore- 
fathers of  Northern  Germany,  and  says  that  these 
savages  were  clean-living,  high-minded,  pure-souled 
men,  who  had  a  respect  for  chastity,  and  that  the 
polluted  society  of  Rome  was  certain  to  go  down 
before  them.  So  it  has  done.  The  British  Empire, 
for  instance,  has  been  built  partly  upon  the  ruins 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  Why?  Because  the  end 
of  the  practices  of  those  old  Romans  was  certain 
to  be,  poHtically  and  morally,  death.  The  noble 
Roman  matron  of  ancient  times  had  been  replaced 
by  cruel  and  licentious  voluptuaries,  who  were 
gradually  sapping  the  manhood  of  Rome  and  pre- 
paring the  way  for  the  downfall  of  the  empire  of  the 
Caesars.  This  is  what  St.  Paul  has  in  mind  as  he 
writes.  He  knows,  and  all  his  readers  know,  and  we 
know  to-day,  that  the  end  of  these  things  is  death. 

But  this  is  not  the  whole  of  his  meaning.  He  uses 
this  well-known  fact,  as  I  have  already  said,  to 
illustrate  a  spiritual  law  —  namely,  that  sin  is  the 
deathward  tendency  in  the  human  soul.  He  is 
not  thinking  of  any  future  hell,  although  such  an 


Il6  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

idea  may  have  been  in  the  background  of  his  mind, 
but  of  the  unescapable  truth  that  if  a  man  yields 
himself  to  sin  of  any  kind  he  yields  himself  to  some- 
thing which  makes  for  the  destruction  of  what  is 
good,  true,  and  God-like  in  him.  .  "The  wages  of 
sin  is  death  " ;  but  what  is  sin  ? 

This  is  a  word  which  occupies  a  large  place  in 
religious  literature,  although  it  is  one  which  Jesus 
seldom  used.  Have  you  noticed  in  reading  the 
New  Testament  how  comparatively  seldom  Jesus 
uses  the  word  "sin"  ?  He  seems  to  have  placed  the 
stress  of  His  teaching  elsewhere.  He  insisted  upon 
life,  and  the  way  to  realise  life,  the  ageless  life,  the 
life  eternal,  and  so  on.  But  it  is  comparatively 
seldom  that  He  talks  much  about  sin.  I  cannot  help 
feeling  that  this  was  because  so  many  people  in  His 
day  were  using  the  word  "sin"  in  a  false  and  wrong 
sense.  When  Pharisees  talked  about  sin  Jesus  felt 
that  they  were  missing  the  mark.  They  never 
thought  of  accusing  themselves  of  it ;  instead  of  that 
they  accused  Him.  The  typical  theologian  holds 
to-day  that  sin  is  some  vague  kind  of  moral  foulness 
before  God  of  which  humanity  has  been  guilty 
without  being  able  to  help  itself,  and  in  spite  of 
all  that  God  could  do  to  prevent  it.  The  ordinary 
phraseology  about  sin  amounts  to  a  flagrant  contra- 
diction. We  are  told  in  one  breath  that  we  have 
inherited  a  deplorable  tendency  to  evil  which  we 
cannot  escape,  and  in  the  other  that  we  are  verily 
guilty  before  God,  and  must  expect  punishment  for 


FROM    DEATH   TO    LIFE  I17 

it  because  we  have  deliberately  sinned  against  the 
light.  Jesus  never  talked  like  this,  and  I  think 
it  would  now  be  generally  agreed  that  He  saw  more 
clearly  what  was  the  matter  with  human  nature  than 
anybody  up  to  His  time. 

Some  people  have  been  telling  you  lately  that 
your  preacher  of  this  evening  denies  the  reality  of 
sin.  One  fairly  prominent  writer,  so  I  understand, 
has  promulgated  the  statement  that  my  teaching 
is  equivalent  to  a  declaration  that  God  does  not 
care  whether  we  sin  or  not,  and  that  as  there  is  no 
sin  there  is  no  need  of  atonement.  There  is  only 
one  word  to  describe  that  kind  of  statement,  and  I 
do  not  like  to  use  it.  It  is  utterly  untrue,  and  it  is 
not  difficult  to  see  the  motive  behind  declarations 
of  that  kind.  It  is  the  desire  to  distort  and  misrep- 
resent any  mode  of  stating  truth  with  which  the 
writer  disagrees.  I  do  not  think  I  need  now  re- 
peat what  I  have  previously  said  regarding  the  nature 
of  sin,  but  perhaps,  for  the  sake  of  greater  clearness 
in  the  examination  of  my  text,  I  had  better  do  so. 
Sin  is  nothing  other  than  selfishness.  Even  rebellion 
against  God  of  a  most  deliberate  character  —  and  I 
have  never  yet  met  a  man  who  would  acknowledge 
that  he  had  been  guilty  of  that  —  is  ultimately  self- 
ishness: it  is  the  attempt  to  live  for  oneself  at  the 
expense  of  some  one  else  or  at  the  expense  of  the 
common  life.  Every  thought,  feeling,  and  desire 
which  springs  from  a  selfish  motive  is  sin.  All 
possible  activities  of  the  soul  are  between  selfishness 


it8  new  theology  sermons 

on  the  one  hand  and  love  on  the  other.  Everything 
that  you  have  thought  or  done  or  desired  to  do  this 
day  is  in  one  or  other  of  those  two  directions :  you 
have  either  been  fulfilhng  the  self  by  serving  the 
whole,  or  you  have  been  trying  to  feed  the  self  by 
robbing  the  whole.  At  every  moral  crisis  in  a  man's 
career  he  is  called  upon  to  choose  between  one  of 
two  courses  —  the  self  ward  or  the  God  ward.  The 
good  life  is  the  life  lived  for  impersonal  ends,  the 
hfe  steadily  and  dehberately  lived  in  terms  of  the 
whole,  the  life  which  makes  the  most  of  itself  in 
order  to  become  a  perfect  gift  to  the  whole.  The 
bad  life  is  the  life  which  tries  to  draw  away  from 
the  whole,  or  to  gratify  itself  at  the  expense  of  the 
whole.  So  far  as  we  are  able  to  judge,  there  has 
only  been  one  perfectly  consistent  life,  one  utterly 
disinterested  life,  earnestly  and  purposefully  lived 
all  the  time  for  the  whole,  and  that  was  the  hfe  of 
Jesus.  But  no  man  is  so  utterly  depraved  but  that 
some  time  or  other  in  his  thoughts  and  deeds  he  gives 
expression  to  the  same  ideal.  I  was  told  by  a  painter 
at  Carbis  Bay  yesterday  that  in  a  visit  of  his  to  the 
United  States  he  came  across  the  following  incident. 
He  was  a  poor  man  then  himself,  the  weather  was 
very  bitter,  and  he  felt  somewhat  bitter  himself 
and  resentful  against  God  on  account  of  the  hard 
destiny  that  had  been  meted  out  to  him.  So,  as  he 
says,  he  was  in  anything  but  a  religious  frame  of 
mind  when  the  following  event  took  place.  He 
was  passing  along  the  street  one  day,  and  heard 


FROM    DEATH    TO    LIFE  II9 

some  men  coming  towards  him,  using  foul  language 
—  language  which,  if  they  meant  it,  amounted  to 
blasphemy;  and  for  the  moment,  in  spite  of  his 
own  despondent  condition,  he  shuddered  at  the 
words  which  they  were  so  glibly  uttering  without 
any  apparent  sense  of  responsibility  for  their  mean- 
ing. Then  his  eye  fell  on  a  poor  little  child  walking 
by  the  side  of  a  young  mother.  Every  now  and  then 
the  latter  lifted  the  child  up  in  her  arms  and  carried 
it  as  long  as  her  feeble  strength  would  permit;  and 
the  poor  little  thing  was  blue  and  numbed  with  cold. 
The  onlooker's  heart  went  out  to  them  in  a  wave 
of  pity,  but  he  had  nothing  to  give  them.  Forth- 
with, to  his  surprise,  one  of  these  very  men  whom 
he  had  heard  blaspheming  picked  up  that  little 
mortal,  put  her  under  his  buckskin  coat,  and  warmed 
her  by  the  heat  of  his  own  body.  At  the  same  time, 
thrusting  his  hand  into  his  pocket,  he  pulled  out  all 
the  money  he  had  and  gave  it  to  the  mother,  telling 
her  to  go  and  get  a  good  meal  for  herself  and  the 
child.  The  reason  why  I  mention  that  actual  and 
authentic  experience  told  me  by  a  man  yesterday, 
whose  heart  thrilled  at  the  remembrance  of  it,  is  this, 
That  bad  man,  as  we  should  call  him,  that  seemingly 
depraved  specimen  of  humanity,  who  was  blas- 
pheming God  with  his  words,  was  manifesting  Him 
in  at  least  one  of  his  deeds.  The  hfting  up  of  that 
suffering  child  and  placing  her  next  to  his  heart  was 
just  the  offering  of  himself  to  something  outside 
himself;  it  was  his  way  of  ministering  to  the  common 


I20  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

life;  he  did  it  along  the  line  of  his  own  experience 
of  human  need.  Now  all  men,  every  one  of  us, 
the  most  selfish  man  or  woman  in  this  hall,  has  been 
doing  that  to  some  extent  even  to-day.  None  of  us 
is  so  utterly  depraved  but  that  some  time  or  other 
in  our  experience  we  sink  the  self  in  order  to  serve 
the  whole,  and  get  the  immediate  reward  that  comes 
from  the  consciousness  that  this  is  life  indeed,  the 
thing  worth  doing,  the  thing  likest  God. 

Do  let  us  be  real  in  what  we  are  saying.  Wherever 
and  whenever  this  ideal  is  betrayed,  sin  emerges. 
I  do  not  care  whether  you  use  the  word  sin  or  not, 
so  long  as  you  see  that  the  one  great  enemy  of  man- 
kind to-day  is  selfishness.  Destroy  that,  and  you 
have  destroyed  the  root  cause  of  most  of  its  miseries. 
But  sin  has  never  injured  God  except  through  man. 
It  is  as  you  hurt  the  common  life  that  you  have 
sinned  against  God;  it  is  the  God  within  that  is 
injured  rather  than  the  God  above  and  beyond  the 
universe :  the  God  above  is  too  strong  for  you ; 
you  cannot  injure  Him.  You  injure  the  indwelling 
God  when  you  hurt  your  brother.  As  one  of  these 
early  Christians  once  said,  "He  that  hatcth  his 
brother  is  a  murderer,  and  ye  know  that  no  murderer 
hath  eternal  life  abiding  in  him."  Sin  makes  for 
death,  love  makes  for  life;  sin  lessens  human  joy, 
love  increases  it;  sin  destroys,  love  creates;  sin 
separates  the  soul  from  the  source  of  all  good,  love 
bridges  the  gulf  again.  To  live  the  sinful  life  is 
cutting  yourself  off  from  the  source  of  all  life.     Sin 


FROM   DEATH   TO   LIFE  121 

never  pays  in  the  end ;  it  is  the  false  life,  and  there- 
fore leads  to  pain.  Sooner  or  later,  in  this  world  or 
the  next,  the  false  must  give  way  to  the  true,  selfish- 
ness to  love,  the  sinful  soul  to  God,  If  you  want 
proof  as  to  what  sin  will  do,  look  into  the  face  of  a 
man  who  is  living  a  selfish  life,  and  you  will  find 
God's  verdict  written  there.  When  Paul  wrote 
these  words  which  form  our  text  no  doubt  he  had  in 
mind  the  coarse,  bloated  face  of  some  man  or  woman 
who  had  been  living  to  the  flesh  and  of  the  flesh  had 
reaped  corruption.  Go  down  into  the  worst  quarters 
of  our  great  cities  to-night  and  you  will  read  the 
same  tale.  I  don't  mean  that  you  need  to  go  to 
the  slums  —  the  West  End  of  London  would  do. 
Every  drunken  roue,  every  painted  harlot,  was  once 
a  child  with  a  face  pure  and  innocent  as  an  angel 
of  God.  What  do  you  read  there  now  —  life  ?  Ah, 
no !  These  do  not  know  life  in  their  fevered  rush 
after  the  things  of  time  and  sense.  What  you  see 
there  is  death :  death  to  purity  and  goodness,  death 
to  holy  aspirations,  death  to  finer  feelings,  death 
even  to  what  deserves  the  name  of  joy.  "The 
wages  of  sin  is  death."  You  need  feel  no  anger 
as  you  gaze  upon  these,  only  a  great  surging  pity 
such  as  Jesus  would  have  felt,  for  these  lost  ones 
know  not  the  life  that  is  life  indeed,  the  hfe  eternal, 
the  life  which  is  to  know  God  and  Jesus  Christ 
whom  He   hath   sent. 

But  I  am  not  going  to  let  you  go  away  from  this 
place  to-night  with  the  impression  that  sensual  folly 


122  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

is  the  worst  kind  of  sin  that  can  be  sinned.  Jesus 
did  not  think  so,  as  you  know.  Paul's  figure  of 
speech  applies  even  more  to  other  ways  of  missing 
the  road  that  leads  to  life.  No  sins  are  so  deadly, 
believe  me,  my  friends,  as  respectable  sins.  Jesus 
knew  this,  and  did  not  hesitate  to  say  so.  He  was 
saying  so  all  the  time,  until  at  last  they  crucified 
Him  for  saying  so.  The  worst  forms  of  selfishness 
are  those  in  which  pride  and  hard-shell  piety  have 
their  place.  It  was  the  self-satisfied  religious  people 
with  whom  Jesus  was  least  able  to  do  much,  and 
He  would  find  it  so  to-day.  Look  at  the  kind  of 
people  who  so  often  pose  to-day  as  the  authorised 
exponents  of  the  religion  of  Jesus.  They  talk 
glibly  about  sin,  without  dreaming  apparently  that 
their  own  kind  of  sin  is  the  worst  of  all.  They, 
the  followers  of  Jesus  !  That  is  the  terrible  damning 
he  which  is  stifling  religion  to-day  as  it  has  tended 
to  do  in  ages  past.  Look  at  the  spirit  shown  by 
many  of  these  professed  followers  of  Jesus.  What 
have  intellectual  arrogance,  smug  self-complacency, 
hardness,  bitterness,  contemptuousness  got  to  do 
with  Jesus  ?  What  has  the  scramble  for  high  places 
in  Church  or  State  got  to  do  with  Jesus?  What 
has  the  desire  to  grab  and  keep  and  hold  as  much 
as  you  can  gather  into  both  hands  of  the  material 
wealth  of  the  world  got  to  do  with  Jesus  ?  But  the 
men  who  do  that  are  often  champions  of  orthodoxy  ! 
Oh,  get  rid  of  all  this  unreal  talk  about  sin,  as  though 
sin  were  something  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 


FROM    DEATH    TO    LIFE  123 

spirit  shown  by  a  man  in  the  ordinary  ways  of  life. 
"Humble  yourselves  under  the  mighty  hand  of  God, 
and  He  shall  lift  you  up."  "Except  ye  receive  the 
kingdom  of  God  as  a  little  child,  ye  shall  in  no  wise 
enter  therein" ;  and  that  man  who  has  not  the  spirit 
of  the  little  child  is  under  the  dominion  of  sin,  whether 
he  reahses  it  or  not.  "If  a  man  have  not  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  he  is  none  of  His."  "If  ye  were  blind 
ye  should  have  no  sin,  but  now  ye  say,  We  see, 
therefore  your  sin  remaineth."  You  do  not  know 
the  real  Jesus;  you  do  not  know  the  hfe  eternal 
which  is  God  and  the  knowledge  of  God.  "The 
wages  of  sin  is  death." 

Now  that  we  have  a  fairly  clear  idea  as  to  what 
is  really  meant  by  sin,  let  me  ask  you  to  look  with 
me  at  the  latter  half  of  our  text:  "The  gift  of  God 
is  eternal  life  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord." 
What  does  St.  Paul  mean  us  to  understand  by  this  ? 
I  am  quite  willing  to  admit  that  Paul's  way  of  stating 
his  experience  of  the  saving  work  of  Christ  is  foreign 
to  our  modes  of  thought  and  speech  to-day.  I  wish 
you  would  allow  for  that  when  you  are  reading  the 
New  Testament;  it  would  simplify  a  great  deal  for 
you  what  seems  complex  now  and  illume  a  good 
deal  that  seems  obscure.  We  do  not  think  in  Paul's 
symbols,  and  that  is  one  reason  why  he  has  been  so 
commonly  misinterpreted.  I  wish  some  concerted 
and  determined  effort  could  be  made  to  rescue  Paul 
from  the  hands  of  the  so-called  orthodox  theologians. 
The  misuse  of  Paul  has  been  a  fruitful  source  of 


124  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

error  in  Christian  thinking,  and  the  only  cure  for  it 
is  to  get  back  to  Jesus.  It  is  a  marvellous  thing 
that  although  the  letters  of  Paul  were  written  before 
the  gospels,  yet  the  words  of  Jesus  in  the  latter 
seem  to  take  us  into  another  mental  atmosphere. 
He  is  simple  where  Paul  is  complex,  clear  where  Paul 
is  turgid.  One  of  the  surest  signs  of  the  greatness 
of  Jesus  is  this  very  fact.  What  he  said  might  have 
been  said  to-day;  it  holds  true  for  all  time.  His 
words  are,  as  Ian  Maclaren  calls  them,  jets  of  truth, 
deathless  words,  words  of  eternal  life.  How  Jesus 
managed  to  escape  the  mental  dialect  of  His  time, 
how  He  could  continue  to  speak  about  the  eternal 
verities  without  making  much  allusion  to  contem- 
porary modes  of  Jewish  thought,  must  always  re- 
main a  mystery.  His  words,  I  say,  might  have  been 
uttered  to-day;  they  are  not  for  one  generation 
only,  but  for  all  generations.  I  have  noticed  many 
a  time  when  I  have  been  addressing  even  the  most 
promiscuous  of  congregations,  including  people  who 
never  go  to  church  at  all,  that  if  I  utter  one  sentence 
from  the  words  of  Jesus,  —  say,  "Blessed  are  the 
pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God,"  or  "Come 
unto  Me,  all  ye  that  labour  and  are  heavy  laden," 
everybody  listens  at  once;  it  seems  as  though  they 
never  grow  tired  of  the  words  of  Jesus.  They  are 
everlastingly  fresh  and  new,  as  though  we  had  never 
heard  them  before.  Fundamentally,  Paul  always 
means  to  declare  the  same  moral  and  spiritual  truth 
as  Jesus,  but  his  way  of  doing  so  is  utterly  different. 


FROM    DEATH    TO    LIFE  12  5 

Theologians  have  spent  too  much  time  in  trying  to 
explain  Jesus  by  means  of  Paul ;  how  would  it  be  if 
they  took  a  turn  at  trying  to  explain  Paul  by  means 
of  Jesus? 

Suppose  we  try  to  do  it  now.  Here,  then,  are 
Paul's  words:  "The  gift  of  God  is  eternal  life 
through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord."  Now,  what  does 
"eternal  life"  signify  with  reference  to  Jesus,  and 
in  what  sense  did  Jesus  bring  this  gift  to  Paul? 
Directly  we  turn  to  Jesus  the  whole  subject  becomes 
luminous.  We  have  only  to  read  that  magnificent 
paradox  contained  in  all  the  gospels  in  order  to  see 
what  Jesus  thought  about  eternal  life.  If  there  is 
one  authentic  saying  in  the  New  Testament,  it  is 
this:  "Whosoever  shall  save  his  life  shall  lose  it, 
and  whosoever  shall  lose  his  life  for  My  sake  shall 
find  it."  The  saying  appears  twice  in  St.  Luke's 
gospel,  so  apparently  Jesus  uttered  it  more  than 
once;  but  the  second  time  the  words,  "for  My 
sake,"  are  omitted.  It  reads  this  way :  "Whosoever 
is  willing  to  save  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  whosoever 
is  willing  to  lose  his  life  shall  save  it."  Take,  again, 
the  striking  saying  in  the  fourth  gospel:  "Except  a 
corn  of  wheat  fall  into  the  ground  and  die,  it  abideth 
alone;  but  if  it  die  it  bringeth  forth  much  fruit." 
This  means  substantially  the  same  thing  as  the  para- 
dox I  have  just  quoted.  Some  of  you  might  say 
that  perhaps  it  is  not  authentic,  because  it  is  con- 
tained only  in  one  gospel,  and  that  the  latest  of  them 
all;   but  I  think  we  should  all  agree  that  it  is  thor- 


126  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

oughly  in  accord  with  the  general  attitude  of  Jesus, 
and  at  any  rate  it  shows  what  the  earliest  Christians 
thought  about  the  significance  of  His  life  and  work. 
For  it  is  not  merely  what  Jesus  said  that  tells  us 
what  He  thought,  but  what  Jesus  did.  We  have 
to  allow  for  the  impression  He  made  upon  those 
who  stood  nearest  to  Him,  and  the  sum  of  the  whole 
matter  is  this :  If  you  want  to  know  what  life  really 
is,  the  life  which  was  before  all  ages,  the  deathless 
life,  the  life  which  never  grows  old,  the  life  eternal, 
you  must  surrender  yourselves,  utterly  and  com- 
pletely, to  the  service  of  the  whole,  which  is  the  will 
of  God ;  the  self  must  go  upon  the  altar,  or,  as  Paul 
has  put  it,  be  crucified  with  Christ;  you  must  be 
willing  to  keep  nothing  back;  you  must  act  and 
think  as  though  3^ou  are  here  for  the  sake  of  the 
whole  race  and  not  for  your  own  individual  self- 
interest;  you  must  live  as  though  you  had  no  per- 
sonal end  to  serve,  and  no  will  but  that  of  the  uni- 
versal Spirit,  who  is  the  source  and  the  goal  of  all 
humanity.  This  is  terribly  hard  for  ordinary  hu- 
man nature  to  do,  even  the  best  of  us ;  it  must  mean 
a  crucifixion  of  some  kind ;  how  could  it  mean  any- 
thing else?  None  of  us  has  ever  succeeded  in 
doing  it  all  the  time,  but  our  Master  did  it,  and  in 
His  spirit  we  may  hope  in  the  end  to  do  it  too.  It 
means  that  our  individuality  is  fulfilled  and  com- 
pleted only  when  it  realises  itself  to  be,  so  to  speak, 
a  perfect  gift  to  Christ  for  the  sake  of  the  whole, 
which  is  your  reasonable  service  and  the  good  and 


FROM    DEATH    TO    LIFE  I27 

acceptable  and  perfect  will  of  God.  This  is  the 
truth  which  Paul  had  grasped  so  clearly,  as  had  all 
the  rest  of  the  apostolic  band ;  but  if  it  had  not  been 
for  Jesus  they  would  never  have  known  it.  In 
the  life  of  Jesus  they  had  seen  it  ideally  embodied 
and  expressed.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  they  loved 
Him  with  such  passionate  devotion?  They  lost 
themselves  in  Jesus  to  find  themselves  in  God.  It 
was  a  grand  life,  they  all  felt  it  to  be  such ;  not  one 
of  them  would  have  exchanged  it  for  the  old  life 
of  selfish  fears  and  wants  and  hates.  Look  at  the 
Apostle  Peter,  for  instance :  he  thought  at  first 
he  had  done  something  great  for  Jesus  in  following 
Him  at  all,  and  so  when  the  great  crisis  was  drawing 
near  he  said  to  his  Lord,  "Lo,  we  have  left  all  and 
followed  Thee;  what  shall  we  have  therefor?" 
But  afterwards  this  same  Peter,  the  very  same  Peter 
who  wanted  to  know  what  he  should  get  for  follow- 
ing Jesus,  acknowledged  it  his  greatest  joy  to  lay 
down  his  fife  for  Him.  Jesus  had  promised  him 
something  great,  and  he  got  it  —  the  honour  of 
dying  a  martyr  on  a  cross  for  his  Master  and  his 
Gospel.  It  must  have  made  a  difference,  this  great 
change!  All  these  first  Christians  knew  it.  "We 
know,"  wrote  one  of  them  "that  we  have  passed 
from  death  to  life,  because"  —  because  what?  — 

"because  we  love "  "We  love  Him  because  He 

first  loved  us."  "Hereby  perceive  we  the  love  of  God, 
because  He  [Jesus]  laid  down  His  life  for  us,  and  we 
ought  also  to  lay  down  our  lives  for  the  brethren." 


128  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

Here  it  is,  this  secret  of  eternal  life  —  the  hardest 
thing  in  the  world,  young  men,  and  yet  the  easiest. 
Live  for  impersonal  ends,  and  trust  yourselves  to 
God.  It  is  a  glorious  hfe  !  Let  your  life  flow  out 
to  all  mankind,  and,  if  need  be,  be  prepared  to 
suffer  for  your  ideal.  Suffer  you  must  in  a  selfish 
world,  just  as  Jesus  had  to  suffer;  but  the  suffering 
cannot  kill  your  joy ;  it  is  the  joy  that  no  man  takcth 
from  you,  the  meed  of  Him  ''who  for  the  joy  that 
was  set  before  Him  endured  the  cross,  despising 
the  shame."  This  joy  is  God's  free  gift  to  you  and 
to  all  who  try  to  live  the  ageless  life.  Just  as  self- 
ishness leads  to  the  death  of  all  worth  having,  so 
love  leads  to  more  and  ever  more  abundant  life. 
A  Divine  law  holds  good  in  either  case,  a  law  that 
knows  no  exception.  "He  that  soweth  to  the  flesh 
shall  of  the  flesh  reap  corruption.  He  that  soweth  to 
the  spirit  shall  of  the  spirit  reap  eternal  life."  Is 
there  any  mystery  about  it?  Is  it  not  self-evident? 
Cannot  you  see  it  exemplified  in  your  own  experience 
and  that  of  your  fellows  every  day  of  your  life? 
But  for  Heaven's  sake  do  not  materiahse  and  in- 
stitutionalise this  truth.  There  are  many  whose 
lives  are  a  blank  denial  of  it  who  yet  believe  them- 
selves to  be  in  the  inner  circle  of  the  friends  and  fol- 
lowers of  Jesus,  but  for  all  their  doctrines  and 
catechisms  they  have  never  obtained  a  vision  of  the 
real  Jesus.  But  the  ragged  street  urchin  knows 
something  of  it  as  he  carries  his  hard-earned  penny 
home  to  buy  bread  for  a  starving  family;   the  tmy 


FROM   DEATH   TO   LIFE  129 

glow  in  his  little  heart   tells  of    a    Divine    mys- 
tery, the  secret  of  eternal  life.     Why  is  he  happy 
as  he  lays  out  his  penny  ?     You  can  tell.     The  God 
who  placed  the  glow  in  his  heart,  who  uttered  Him- 
self in  that  action,  is  bestowing  upon  him  some  meas- 
ure of  the  life  eternal.     The  man  with  the  lifeboat 
knows  it  as  he  goes  out  to  rescue  the  passengers 
from  a  doomed  ship  — men  and  women  whom  he 
has  never  seen  or  heard  of  before  in  all  his  life  — 
without  giving  so  much  as  a  thought  to  himself. 
The  champion  of  an  unpopular  cause  knows  it  as 
he  goes  out  with  his  comrades  to  break  down  the 
forces  of  selfish  indifference  in  the  name  of  justice 
and  truth.     That  young  fellow  on  the  threshold  of 
manhood  knows  it  as  the  vision  flashes  upon  him 
that  to  live  for  pleasure  or  success  is  mean  and 
ignoble,  while  to  live  for  ideals,   the  full  fruition 
of  which  he  will  never  live  to  see,  is  alone  worthy  of 
one  who  walks  the  same  earth  as  Jesus.     As  he 
lifts  his  face  to  the  stars,  his  heart  thrills  with  a  new 
sense  of  gladness  and  power.     It  came  from  God, 
and  it  is  God;    it  is  the  life  eternal.     Yes,  this  is 
the  life  that  is  life  indeed,  and  the  more  closely  it  is 
lived  to  Jesus  the  greater  our  grasp  upon  eternity. 

Oh,  all  you  weary  ones,  who  wonder  whither  the 
soul  of  hfe  has  fled,  try  the  plan  of  Jesus.  Perhaps 
you  have  no  confidence  in  yourself.  Well,  be  it  so; 
begin  by  having  confidence  in  Him.  All  you  people 
who  have  been  doing  wicked  things,  stop  doing 
them,  and  believe  that  it  is  easier  to  serve  the  higher 


130  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

than  the  lower,  no  matter  how  impossible  it  may 
seem.  God  is  with  you  when  you  choose  life  in- 
stead of  death.  All  you  nerveless,  patient,  sad- 
hearted  people,  you  self-distrustful  people,  who 
wonder  what  life  is  all  about,  come  and  look  at  what 
Paul  learned  from  Jesus  —  and  what  a  Paul  it 
made  !  This  man  who  went  about  haling  men  and 
women  and  committing  them  to  prison  was  the  Paul 
who  afterwards  lived  to  say,  "For  to  me  to  hve  is 
Christ."  "Now  abideth  faith,  hope,  love,  these 
three;  and  the  greatest  of  these  is  love."  There  had 
been  a  change  somewhere,  for  him  to  be  able  to  say 
that.  You  are  just  the  kind  of  people  that  Jesus 
used  to  be  able  to  help  so  much :  He  found  it  much 
harder  to  deal  with  the  people  who  had  plenty  of 
everything  and  were  thoroughly  well  satisfied  with 
themselves;  He  could  not  get  on  with  them  at  all. 
"The  publicans  and  harlots,"  He  said,  "go  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  before  you."  Begin  hfe  again 
with  Jesus,  all  of  you  who  feel  that  you  are  down 
and  want  to  get  up.  Strive  towards  the  life  eternal, 
the  life  which  is  love,  and  you  shall  leave  all  your 
shadows  behind.  There  shall  come  to  you  such 
an  exaltation  of  spirit  that  no  earthly  sorrow,  how- 
ever terrible,  shall  ever  be  able  to  separate  you  from 
the  love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord. 


THE   ATONING    WILL 

"  Then  said  I,  Lo,  I  come  (in  the  volume  of 
the  book  it  is  written  of  me),  to  do  Thy  will, 
O  God."  —  Hebrews  x.  7. 

The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  has  an  interest  of 
its  own,  and  occupies  a  special  place  in  the  New 
Testament,  because  it  is  probably  the  only  writing 
we  possess  from  the  pen  of  this  particular  author, 
whoever  he  may  have  been.  In  our  Authorised 
Version  the  Epistle  is  attributed  to  St.  Paul,  but  it 
cannot  be  the  work  of  St.  Paul.  New  Testament 
scholars  are  now  practically  agreed  that  this  is  so, 
for  the  various  letters  of  St.  Paul,  such  as  Romans, 
Corinthians,  Galatians,  belong  to  quite  a  different 
category  from  this  one.  The  style  is  different 
and  the  point  of  view  is  not  quite  the  same.  Per- 
sonally I  incline  to  the  view  that  this  Epistle  was 
written  by  the  learned  and  courtly  Apollos,  who,  as 
we  learn  from  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  came  to 
Ephesus  in  the  wake  of  St.  Paul,  and  there  obtained 
a  deeper  insight  into  the  religion  of  Jesus  than  he 
had  possessed  before.  Apollos  was  an  Alexandrian 
Jew,  a  fact  which  in  itself  is  significant  of  a  great 
deal.  At  this  time  Alexandria  was  the  greatest 
religious    and    philosophical    centre    in    the    world, 

131 


132  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

and  the  great  school  of  Alexandria  had  more  to  do 
with  the  welding  together  of  Greek  culture  and 
Hebrew  religion  than  any  other  single  influence 
whatsoever.  The  Jew  of  Palestine  and  the  Jew 
of  Alexandria  were  quite  different  types.  As  the 
former  grew  narrower  in  his  outlook  upon  life, 
the  latter  grew  broader.  Perhaps  this  difference 
was  largely  due  to  a  man  called  Philo,  a  contem- 
porary of  Jesus,  and  a  great  thinker,  who  taught 
at  Alexandria,  whose  aim  it  was  to  combine  the 
breadth  of  Greek  philosophy  with  the  high  serious- 
ness of  Israelitish  religion.  Hence  there  grew  up  in 
Alexandria  a  great  religious  philosophy  which  later 
on  was  laid  hold  of  and  transformed  by  Christianity. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  the  first  three  cen- 
turies of  Christian  history  Alexandria  was  the  foun- 
tain-head of  intelligent  Christian  thinking,  typified 
by  men  like  Clement  and  Origen,  men  whose  names 
are  a  power  in  the  world  of  thought  even  to-day.  In 
my  judgment  Origen,  who  was  considered  too  heter- 
odox to  find  a  place  among  the  saints  in  the  Roman 
Calendar,  was  the  greatest  saint  and  thinker  of  them 
all.  We  are  getting  back  now  to  some  of  the  truths 
that  Origen  used  to  teach. 

How  much  ApoUos  had  to  do  with  making  Alex- 
andria a  centre  of  Christian  learning  we  do  not  know, 
but  probably  a  great  deal.  It  was  therefore  a  very 
important  event  when  this  man  came  under  the 
influence  of  the  Apostle  Paul,  as  seems  to  have  been 
the  case.     Before  long,  however,  the  influence  of 


THE    ATONING   WILL  I33 

Apollos  upon  the  Churches  of  Asia  Minor  rivalled 
that  of  Paul  himself.  We  learn  from  Paul's  first 
letter  to  the  Corinthians  that  the  httle  Church  at 
Corinth,  for  example,  had  actually  divided  into 
parties,  some  calling  themselves  follov^ers  of  Paul 
and  others  of  Apollos.  This  may  well  have  been 
the  case,  for  the  learned  Alexandrian  Jew  must  have 
been  a  man  of  considerable  personal  charm.  In 
a  later  chapter  (i  Cor.  xvi.  12)  Paul  makes  a  beauti- 
ful reference  to  him,  which  goes  to  show  that  the 
two  men  remained  good  friends  in  spite  of  these 
divisions.  After  Paul  had  been  complaining  that 
the  Corinthians  were  talking  about  the  party  of  Paul, 
the  party  of  Apollos,  the  party  of  Cephas,  the  party 
of  Christ,  and  so  on,  this  is  the  way  he  concludes: 
"As  touching  our  brother  Apollos,  I  greatly  desired 
him  to  come  unto  you  with  the  brethren;  but  his 
will  was  not  at  all  to  come  at  this  time ;  but  he  will 
come  when  he  shall  have  convenient  time."  That  is 
quite  a  tender  touch,  and  a  beautiful  sidelight  upon 
the  character  of  Apollos.  Evidently  he  was  un- 
willing to  go  to  Corinth  at  a  time  when  there  was 
some  inclination  to  glorify  him  at  the  expense  of  his 
great  and  noble  friend.  So  Paul  urged  in  vain. 
Is  it  not  just  like  Paul's  magnanimity?  He  has 
told  the  people  not  to  talk  about  the  party  of  Paul 
and  the  party  of  Apollos,  and  yet  at  that  very  same 
instant  he  wants  Apollos  to  go  to  Corinth,  and  Apollos 
will  not  go;  he  says  he  will  put  off  his  visit  until  a 
"more  convenient  time." 


134  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

Now  this  is  the  man  who,  as  I  think,  wrote  this 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  I  cannot  give  you  now 
all  the  reasons  why  I  think  so,  but  here  are  one  or 
two  of  them.  First,  it  is  clear  that  the  writer  of 
this  treatise  knew  Jewish  religion  thoroughly,  and 
Greek  culture  not  less  so.  Then  he  makes  free  use 
of  the  allegorical  method,  a  method  which  was 
characteristic  of  the  school  of  Alexandria.  We 
learn  from  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  that  Apollos  was 
"mighty  in  the  Scriptures,"  and  that  he  "publicly 
confuted  the  Jews,  proving  by  the  Scriptures  that 
Jesus  was  the  Christ."  One  cannot  help  thinking 
that  in  this  Epistle  —  addressed  to  Jews,  remember 
—  we  have  some  of  these  powerful  discourses  which 
so  delighted  the  Christians  and  confuted  the  Jews. 
They  are  probably  the  very  words  he  used;  they 
are  just  the  kind  of  thing  in  which  Apollos  would  be 
a  master.  The  whole  Epistle  from  beginning  to  end 
is  a  series  of  Old  Testament  illustrations  of  the  life 
and  work  of  Christ  as  Prophet,  Priest,  and  King. 
We  must  beware  of  taking  them  too  hterally,  for 
if  we  do  we  shall  miss  the  point.  Apollos  never  uses 
Old  Testament  language  as  anything  else  than  il- 
lustration of  the  spiritual  truth  he  wants  to  teach. 
No  doubt  to  some  modern  readers  his  way  of  putting 
things  may  seem  a  little  dry  and  occasionally  far- 
fetched, but  that  is  because  our  mental  dialect  is 
not  quite  the  same  as  his. 

You  must  forgive  me  for  this  lengthy  introduction 
to  our  text,  but  I  wanted  to  help  you  see  the  kind  of 


THE    ATONING    WILL 


135 


man  who,  as  I  think,  wrote  it,  so  that  you  may  the 
better  realise  what  he  is  aiming  at  in  the  text  itself. 
I  wish  we  had  Apollos  himself  here  to  explain  his 
use  of  the  words  which  form  our  text,  for  I  have  no 
doubt  whatever  that  his  personality  would  make  them 
live  for  us  as  vividly  and  impressively  as  they  did 
for  his  primitive  audiences  of  Christians  and  Jews. 
To  begin  with,  then,  I  will  ask  you  to  notice  that 
this  is  one  of  the  numerous  quotations  which  Apollos 
makes  from  the   Old   Testament   Scripture.     It  is 
from  Psalm  xl.   7.     Apollos  evidently  did  not  use 
the  Hebrew,  but  the  Greek  translation  called  the 
Septuagint,  which  was  generally  used  in  Alexandria. 
There  is  a  slight  difference  between  the  two.     The 
whole    passage,    including    the    immediate    context 
as  translated  from  the  Hebrew  in  our  Authorised 
Version  of  the  Old  Testament,  is  as  follows:   ''Sac- 
rifice and  offering  Thou  didst  not  desire ;   mine  ears 
hast  Thou  opened :   burnt  offering  and  sin  offering 
has  Thou  not  required.     Then  said  I,  Lo,  I  come  : 
in  the  volume  of  the  book  it  is  written  of  me,  I 
delight  to  do  Thy  will,  O  my  God :   yea.  Thy  law 
is  within  my  heart."     There  is  a  grand  ring  about 
that  old  Hebrew  sentence.     But  I  dare  say  you  have 
noticed  that,  although  there  is  no  serious  discrepancy 
between  the  two,  yet  this  is  not  quite  the  same  render- 
ing as  that  which  Apollos  gives  us  in  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews.     Instead  of  "Mine  ears  hast  Thou 
opened,"  Apollos  writes,  "A  body  hast  Thou  pre- 
pared me."     Again,  in  the  text  itself  the  Psalmist 


136  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

has,  "  I  delight  to  do  Thy  will,  O  my  God  " ;  Apollos, 
following  the  Septuagint,  says,  "Lo,  I  come  to  do 
Thy  will,  O  God."  I  think  the  Hebrew  is  better, 
as  we  shall  see  when  we  look  further  into  it.  For 
what  did  this  passage  originally  mean  —  not  to 
Apollos,  but  to  the  Psalmist?  If  we  can  only  get 
a  clear  idea  of  what  the  Old  Testament  writer  meant 
by  these  words,  we  shall  be  sure  to  be  on  the  track 
of  what  Apollos  meant. 

The  psalm  which  contains  them  belongs  to  a  com- 
paratively late  date  in  Israelitish  history,  and  was 
composed  under  the  influence  of  the  prophetic 
rather  than  the  priestly  spirit.  It  is  a  plea  for  spirit- 
ual instead  of  ritual  worship.  I  suppose  you  all 
know  that  the  prophet  and  the  priest  right  through 
Israehtish  history  stood  for  two  contrasted  ideals  in 
faith  and  worship;  it  is  so  even  to-day,  for  the  two 
types  of  mind  are  always  to  be  found  wherever 
religion  exists.  I  dare  say  you  will  find  the  prophetic 
habit  of  mind  here  in  this  audience,  and  close  beside 
it  the  priestly  habit  of  mind.  Broadly  speaking, 
the  prophet  has  always  stood  for  spontaneity,  free- 
dom, the  inwardness  of  religion.  The  priest,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  insisted  upon  the  value  of  forms 
and  ceremonies,  and  the  necessity  for  obedience  to 
ecclesiastical  order.  I  do  not  mean  that  the  prophet 
has  always  been  right  and  the  priest  always  wrong. 
It  is  not  so,  but  on  the  whole  the  prophet  has  gen- 
erally been  nearer  to  the  spiritual  ideal  than  the 
priest.     It  is  so  here.     The  author  of  this  beautiful 


THE    ATONING    WILL  1 37 

Old  Testament  hymn  belongs  to  the  order  of  the 
prophets,  and  his  object  is  to  recall  the  mind  of  the 
worshipper  from  ritual  observance  to  moral  and 
spiritual  values.  ''Burnt  offering  hast  Thou  not 
required :  yea,  Thy  law  is  within  my  heart."  You 
see  where  he  puts  the  emphasis.  The  peculiar 
sentence,  "In  the  volume  of  the  book  it  is  written  of 
me,  Lo,  I  come  to  do  Thy  will,  O  God,"  is  no  doubt 
a  reference  to  certain  familiar  passages  in  earlier 
prophetic  books.  For  example:  "This  command- 
ment which  I  command  thee  this  day,  it  is  not  hidden 
from  thee,  neither  is  it  far  off.  It  is  not  in  heaven^ 
that  thou  shouldest  say.  Who  shall  go  up  for  us  to 
heaven,  and  bring  it  unto  us,  that  we  may  hear  it 
and  do  it  ?  .  .  .  but  the  word  is  very  nigh  unto  thee, 
in  thy  mouth  and  in  thy  heart,  that  thou  mayest  do 
it"  (Deut,  XXX.  11-14).  When  we  remember  that 
this  was  the  book  which  in  the  reign  of  King  Josiah 
and  at  a  time  of  great  national  revival  was  discovered 
in  the  Temple,  we  can  understand  the  Psalmist 
saying  what  he  does.  I  should  not  at  all  wonder  if 
the  Hebrew  original  of  our  text  was  a  distinct  refer- 
ence to  that  particular  passage  in  the  Book  of  Deu- 
teronomy. The  Psalmist  means  that  his  religious 
experience  is  like  that  described  in  the  prophetic 
passage  in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy:  "Yea,  Thy 
law  is  within  my  heart."  It  is  that  the  worship  which 
is  acceptable  to  God  is  the  worship  of  a  consecrated^ 
unselfish,  noble  life.  Here  we  have  a  sort  of  an- 
ticipation of  those  fine  words  of  St.  Paul :  "I  beseech 


138         NEW  THEOLOGY  SERMONS 

you,  therefore,  brethren,  that  ye  present  your  bodies 
a  living  sacrifice,  holy,  acceptable  unto  God,  which 
is  your  reasonable  service." 

In  the  use  that  he  makes  of  the  Old  Testament 
passage  is  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
careful  to  maintain  the  original  meaning?  I  think 
you  will  agree  with  me  that  that  is  a  very  important 
question.  We  have  now  made  sure  of  what  the  Old 
Testament  writer  meant  by  his  words :  they  had  a 
purely  spiritual  significance;  they  were  a  protest 
against  ritualism  and  extemalism  in  religion.  Now, 
is  Apollos  careful  to  keep  that  meaning  before  his 
own  mind  when  he  uses  the  words?  I  think  he  is, 
but  he  deliberately  expands  the  meaning.  He  thinks 
of  the  passage  in  relation  to  the  sacrifice  of  Christ, 
which  of  course  the  Psalmist  did  not.  The  Psalmist 
was  thinking  of  himself  or  of  the  typical  worshipper 
in  general.  The  thought  of  Apollos  concerning  it 
is  somewhat  as  follows :  First,  he  says  the  Jewish 
sacrificial  system  has  no  vital  efficacy  for  the  doing 
away  of  sin.  Look  at  Hebrews  x.  4:  "For  it  is  not 
possible  that  the  blood  of  bulls  and  of  goats  should 
take  away  sins."     It  requires 

A  sacrifice  of  nobler  name 
And  richer  blood  than  they. 

Now,  please  listen  carefully  to  what  I  have  to  say 
next.  No  doubt  we  should  all  agree  with  Apollos 
that  what  is  wrong  with  the  world  cannot  be  put 
right  by  the  slaughter  of  bulls  and  goats,  or  by  any 


THE    ATONING    WILL  1 39 

other  kind  of  ritualism.  But  what  will  put  it  right  ? 
Apollos  tells  us  distinctly  that  the  sacrifice  of  Christ 
will  do  it,  and  nothing  else.  Here  are  his  words : 
"Then  said  I,  Lo,  I  come  (in  the  volume  of  the  book 
it  is  written  of  me) ;  I  delight  to  do  Thy  will." 
"He  taketh  away  the  first  that  He  may  establish  the 
second.  By  the  which  will  we  are  sanctified  through 
the  offering  of  the  body  of  Jesus  Christ  once  for  all." 
Unless  we  carefully  keep  in  mind  here  the  original 
spiritual  meaning  of  the  Old  Testament  passage 
quoted  by  Apollos,  we  shall  fall  into  the  very  blunder 
from  which  he  was  trying  to  save  his  Jewish  readers ; 
I  mean  that  we  might  materiahse  this  spiritual 
principle.  We  might  regard  Christ  as  having  done 
something  for  us  which  we  need  not  do  for  ourselves 
or  for  any  one  else.  Apollos  did  not  mean  that; 
certainly  the  Old  Testament  Psalmist  never  meant 
anything  remotely  approaching  it.  One  of  the  most 
lamentable  things  in  Christian  history  is  the  way 
in  which  this  mistake  is  made  over  and  over  again, 
as  though  it  had  never  been  corrected  before.  I 
have  no  doubt  I  address  some  people  who  have  been 
taught  to  think  that  when  Jesus  died  on  Calvary  He 
bore  in  some  mysterious  way  the  punishment  of  all 
the  sins  that  had  ever  been  committed  by  mankind, 
as  well  as  those  of  all  the  generations  yet  unborn, 
and  that  if  you  will  only  accept  by  faith  this  fin- 
ished work,  as  it  is  called,  you  will  escape  in  the 
world  to  come  all  the  penal  consequences  of  your  own 
wrongdoing,  however  richly  you  may  deserve  them. 


I40  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

But,  my  friend,  this  is  not  true,  and  ought  not  to  be 
true.  The  falsehood  would  never  have  lasted  so 
long  but  for  the  truth  behind  it,  the  truth  which  is 
clearly  and  plainly  stated  in  my  text,  and  which  I 
am  now  going  to  try  to  apply  to  your  life  and  mine. 
Before  doing  so  let  me  repeat,  then,  as  definitely  as 
I  can,  that  in  this  passage,  taken  by  Apollos  from 
Psalm  xL,  there  is  not  a  trace  of  the  shadow  of  an 
idea  that  any  one  has  ever  borne  the  punishment  of 
any  one  else's  sin,  or  that  the  Saviour  does  for  the 
sinner  what  the  sinner  does  not  need  to  do  in  his 
turn  for  himself  and  for  mankind.  You  really 
must  not  materiahse  the  work  of  Christ;  if  you  do 
you  will  be  on  the  side  of  the  Jewish  priesthood 
rather  than  on  that  of  Apollos  and  the  Psalmist. 
The  work  of  Christ  is  either  inward  and  spiritual 
or  it  is  nothing.  Magical  and  mechanical  it  never 
was.  "Sacrifice  and  offering  thou  didst  not  desire. 
...  I  desire  to  do  Thy  will,  O  my  God :  yea.  Thy 
law  is  within  my  heart." 

What,  then,  is  the  truth  about  the  matter  ?  What 
did  and  does  Christ  do  for  mankind  ?  By  the  word 
"Christ"  for  the  moment  I  mean  the  very  Jesus 
of  Galilee  and  Jerusalem :  before  we  finish  I  want 
to  give  that  word  the  larger  meaning  which  it  bore 
in  the  minds  of  Apollos  and  Paul.  What,  then,  did 
Jesus  do  for  mankind  ?  The  first  thing  He  did  was 
to  live  a  perfectly  unselfish  life.  That  seems  an 
absurdly  simple  thing  to  say,  but  the  hving  of  that 
life  was  not  a  simple  thing  to  do.     We  could  not  do 


THE   ATONING    WILL  I4I 

it,  we  are  not  constituted  to  do  it;  some  of  us  no 
doubt  succeed  better  than  others  in  approximating 
to  it,  and  when  that  is  so  we  say,  there  is  a  Christ- 
hke  hfe.  We  mean  a  Hfe  like  that  of  Jesus.  But 
until  Jesus  came  men  had  never  known  what  it  was 
even  to  see  such  a  life  lived.  It  was  God's  way  of 
showing  the  world  two  things :  first,  the  kind  of  life 
which  is  the  fullest  human  expression  of  His  own; 
and  second,  the  kind  of  hfe  which  ought  to  be,  and 
shall  be  ours  when  we  are  perfectly  at  one  with  the 
will  of  our  Father.  Without  entering  into  any 
elaborate  discussion  at  this  moment  as  to  who  Jesus 
was,  let  me  remark  before  passing  on  that  the  nature 
with  which  He  was  born  was  such  as  to  enable  Him 
to  Hve  this  perfectly  unselfish  noble  life.  But  what 
would  be  sure  to  happen  to  such  a  Hfe  as  this  in  such 
a  time  as  that  in  which  Jesus  lived?  What  would 
happen  to  Him  to-day?  I  dare  say  we  should  not 
nail  Jesus  on  a  wooden  cross  if  He  came  now,  but 
we  should  manage  to  break  His  heart  before  we 
had  done  with  Him.  In  His  time  that  happened 
which  we  should  naturally  expect  to  happen.  His 
Hfe  became  a  tragedy;  men  misunderstood  it;  they 
could  not  beheve  in  the  disinterestedness  of  Jesus. 
He  disappointed  them,  disturbed  their  self-com- 
placency, wounded  their  self-love.  So  in  the  end 
they  determined  to  get  rid  of  Him  by  kiHing  Him. 
But  that  did  not  get  rid  of  Him ;  quite  the  contrary : 
He  became  a  greater  power  than  ever,  and  the  power 
of  the  name  of  Jesus  goes  on  increasing  in  the  world 


142  NEW  THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

to-day.  Why  has  this  been  so,  and  what  does  it 
teach?  How  is  it  that  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus  did 
not  put  an  end  to  His  work  and  influence  in  the 
world,  as  His  enemies  thought  it  would?  Our  text 
gives  us  the  reason.  It  was  because  that  life  was 
the  expression  of  the  will  and  the  very  nature  of 
God ;  it  was  because  it  was  lived  in  accordance  with 
the  mind  and  heart  of  God,  and  therefore  death  and 
evil  had  no  power  in  the  long  run  to  hinder  or  destroy 
it.  That  life  was  a  sublime  expression  and  a  supreme 
demonstration  of  the  power  of  good  over  evil,  light 
over  darkness,  truth  over  falsehood.  It  showed 
men  that  the  noblest  kind  of  life  is  after  all  invin- 
cible. This  was  the  first  and  great  thing  which 
Jesus  did  for  mankind. 

But  this  is  not  all;  it  was  only  the  beginning. 
The  next  thing  to  be  demonstrated  was  that  the 
same  spirit  that  was  in  Jesus  and  governed  His  whole 
career  on  earth  was  the  spirit  of  the  true  humanity: 
"The  light  that  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into 
the  world."  The  spirit  of  Jesus  was  thus  the  spirit 
of  Christ  —  Christ  as  Paul  meant  it  —  the  ideal  or 
Divine  manhood  as  it  exists  eternally  in  God.  But 
that  ideal  or  Divine  manhood  is  also  in  every  soul 
of  man  that  cometh  into  the  world.  It  is  potentially 
present  in  every  one  who  is  now  listening  to  me. 
What  needs  to  be  done  is  to  get  it  manifested  or 
brought  out  into  conscious  activity.  Wherefore 
the  next  great  thing  that  Jesus  did  for  mankind  was 
to  show  us  ourselves  as  we  ought  to  be.     If  we  try 


THE   ATONING   WILL  143 

to  live  our  lives  as  Jesus  lived  His,  we  shall  find  that 

the  same  spirit  of  power  is  with  us  in  doing  it ;  every 

one  of  us  shall  be  able  to  say  with  our  Lord,  *'Lo, 

I  come  (in  the  volume  of  the  book  it  is  written  of  me) 

to  do  Thy  will,  O  God;  yea,  Thy  law  is  within  my 

heart."     This  is  the  real  work  which  Jesus  has  done 

for  the  world.     He  has  shown  us  our  own  Christhood, 

and  made  us  believe  in  the  possibility  of  realising  it. 

This  was  and  is  the  will  of  God  for  men.     And  so, 

to  speak  of  Jesus  as  having  paid  some  mysterious 

penalty  for  us  in  the  unseen  is  not  only  untrue,  but 

even  morally  mischievous,  for  it  draws  attention  away 

from  the  essential  truth,  which  is  that  all  human  hfe 

is  of  the  same  quality  as  His,  a  manifestation  of  God. 

I  wish  to  speak  very  gently  and  reverently  about 

any  cherished  form  of  belief,  however  mistaken,  but 

I  cannot  pretend  to  misunderstand  or  ignore  this 

one. 

A  feeble  staff  I  would  not  break, 

A  feeble  faith  I  would  not  shake, 

Or  even  rashly  pluck  away 

The  terror  that  some  truth  may  stay, 

Whose  loss  might  leave  the  soul  without 

A  shield  against  the  shafts  of  doubt. 

But  often  when  I  have  heard  men  discussing  the 
atoning  work  of  Jesus  I  have  asked  them  to  tell  me 
precisely  what  they  suppose  Him  to  have  effected 
in  the  unseen  and  upon  the  mind  of  God  by  His 
death  on  Calvary.  As  a  rule,  the  person  interro- 
gated  takes   refuge   in   such   statements   as,    "The 


144  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

mystery  of  the  Cross,"  and  so  on.  He  finds  it  im- 
possible to  state  in  plain  language,  such  as  you 
business  men  want  in  business  things,  exactly  what 
he  means.  Only  this  very  morning  I  have  received 
a  pamphlet  containing  an  address  delivered  to  a 
representative  body  of  Christian  ministers  and 
others,  in  which  we  are  warned  not  to  expect  to 
be  able  to  explain  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  because  it  is 
beyond  all  explanation.  But  somehow,  my  friends, 
I  do  not  think  it  is.  I  think  the  explanation  is  at 
once  simple  and  subhme.  I  beheve  I  could  get  a 
child  to  understand  it.  I  have  tried  to  show  you 
that  the  thought  of  the  Old  Testament  writer  of 
my  text  really  was  a  declaration  of  the  principle 
that  the  forthgiving  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  is  at  once 
the  expression  of  the  will  of  God  and  the  ministra- 
tion of  more  abundant  hfe  to  mankind,  and  when 
Apollos  makes  use  of  that  Old  Testament  passage 
he  is  thinking  all  the  time  of  the  true  inwardness, 
the  moral  and  spiritual  value  of  the  redeeming  work 
of  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ. 

Now  apply  this  to  yourselves.  Prejudge  nothing, 
take  nothing  for  granted ;  see  how  it  works  in  your 
everyday  concerns.  Let  the  beautiful  truth  of  my 
text  be  its  own  explanation,  and  look  at  your  fives 
in  the  light  of  it.  Let  me  give  you  an  example  of 
what  I  mean.  A  considerable  time  ago  I  heard  of 
a  case  of  the  following  kind :  Two  sisters  and  a 
brother  enjoyed  a  fittle  patrimony  between  them, 
the  sisters  allowing  their  brother  full  control  of  their 


THE   ATONING   WILL  145 

property.  Somehow  the  young  man  became  tempted 
to  speculate,  and  was  gradually  led  on  to  more  and 
more  hazardous  ventures,  without  telhng  his  sisters 
what  he  was  doing.  Presently,  the  crash  came,  and 
they  found  themselves  penniless.  The  wrongdoer, 
who  was  of  a  reserved  disposition,  said  very  little 
in  apology  or  extenuation  of  his  conduct,  yet  he 
suffered  greatly  from  depression  and  the  pangs  of 
self-reproach.  His  brave  and  loyal  sisters  guessed 
what  was  passing  in  his  mind,  and  did  everything 
in  their  power  to  show  him  that  they  cared  for  him 
as  much  as  ever.  The  subject  of  the  family  misfor- 
tune was  scarcely  ever  alluded  to.  When  the  in- 
evitable privation  came  they  shared  it  together  with- 
out murmuring  or  discontent.  One  day,  after  the 
light  had  begun  to  shine  again  a  little,  the  brother 
broke  silence,  and  with  considerable  emotion  told 
his  sisters  that  their  unselfish  affection  had  saved 
him.  If,  he  said,  they  had  ever  reproached  him  for 
his  selfish  folly,  he  would  have  put  an  end  to  his  life, 
but  instead  of  that  they  had  led  him  to  see  and 
choose  the  better  part,  not  so  much  by  what  they 
said  as  by  what  they  did.  They  did  not  talk  religion 
at  him;  they  Hved  the  principle  of  the  Cross  in  his 
presence.  They  had  drawn  forth  the  better  man- 
hood by  the  Christ-like  spirit  they  had  shown  in 
suffering  for  his  faults.  Here  on  a  small  scale  is 
the  very  thing  declared  in  my  text;  it  is  a  hmited 
expression  of  what  Jesus  has  done  for  the  world. 
We  do  not  need  even  to  say  that  it  is  something  like 


146  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

it;  it  is  the  working  of  the  self-same  spirit,  it  is  the 
appUcation  of  the  principle  of  the  Cross.  These 
brave  and  good  women  bore  the  Cross  for  their 
brother,  and  now  as  in  all  the  yesterdays  of  history 
the  Cross  has  power  to  win  moral  victory  in  your  life 
and  mine.  This  beautiful  thing,  this  atoning  love, 
this  spirit  of  Jesus,  needs  to  be  manifested  more 
and  more  every  day  and  hour.  It  is  the  kind  of 
doctrine  that  everybody  can  understand,  and  the 
only  one  that  the  world  needs. 

Twice  within  the  last  week  a  number  of  the  poorest 
crippled  children  in  this  district  have  been  enter- 
tained in  the  hall  below  the  City  Temple.  I  am 
told  it  was  wonderful  to  see  the  compassionate 
goodwill  with  which  the  workers  came  to  help  on 
that  occasion.  Besides  City  Temple  workers  there 
came  some  music-hall  artistes  to  amuse  the  children 
with  songs  and  recitations.  In  the  joy  and  pathos 
of  that  hour  they  had  a  not  unimportant  share. 
They  came  for  nothing,  of  course,  except  the  desire 
to  help  and  heal.  I  have  little  doubt  that  those 
music-hall  people  would  have  been  considerably 
astonished  if  some  one  had  told  them  that  they  were 
first-rate  theologians,  and  that  what  they  were  doing 
was  mentioned  in  the  Bible;  and  yet  it  was  so. 
The  songs  they  sang  to  the  children  were  certainly 
not  as  beautiful  as  the  fortieth  Psalm,  but  they  were 
akin  to  that  Psalm  in  spirit  and  purpose.  These 
singers  came  to  brighten  poor  suffering  lives,  and 
in   so   doing   they   were   manifesting  something  of 


THE   ATONING   WILL  I47 

the  spirit  of  Christ  and  helping  to  hft  the  world  up 
to  God.  Do  not  tell  me  that  this  has  nothing  to  do 
with  Calvary;  it  has  everything  to  do  with  it.  I 
do  not  know  what  the  world  might  have  been  if 
Jesus  had  never  come ;  but  the  fact  that  He  has  come 
has  meant  the  inpouring  of  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice 
into  the  life  of  mankind  in  such  a  way  as  could  never 
have  been  without  Him.  By  the  way,  during  one 
of  the  little  meetings  to  which  I  have  referred  it  was 
determined  to  send  a  telegram  of  greeting  to  the 
Lord  Mayor  from  the  children.  Then  followed 
a  pathetic  scene  which  drew  tears  from  the  eyes  of 
the  spectators.  When  the  proposal  to  send  the  tele- 
gram was  made  from  the  platform  it  was  received 
with  quavering  cheers  by  these  poor  little  guests 
of  Jesus.  They  knew  who  their  friend  was,  and  in 
acting  thus  they  were  adoring  the  spirit  of  Christ 
in  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London. 

Sir  William  Treloar  will  not  receive  a  worthier 
tribute  than  that  in  all  his  year  of  office,  and  I  hope 
he  never  wants  a  greater.  It  was  a  great  thing  to 
be  cheered  by  the  sick,  the  maimed,  the  halt,  and 
the  blind.  Blessed  be  God,  while  theologians  are 
writing  learned  disquisitions  on  the  Atonement, 
here  it  is  in  the  midst  of  us. 

Let  us  go  home  and  practise  the  Atonement,  the 
making-one  of  God  and  man.  Just  as  the  Psalmist 
meant  himself  when  he  wrote  my  text,  and  Apollos 
meant  Christ,  so  I  mean  you  and  Christ,  Christ  in 
you.    Ritual  and  dogma  do  not  matter:  "Sacrifice 


148  NEW  THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

and  offering  Thou  wouldest  not;  then  said  I,  Lo 
I  come  (in  the  volume  of  the  book  it  is  written  of 
me)  to  do  Thy  will,  O  God.  Yea,  Thy  law  is  within 
my  heart."  You  fathers  and  mothers,  go  and  set 
the  Atonement  to  work  in  your  children ;  you  busi- 
ness men,  give  it  a  chance  with  those  you  employ, 
or  who  employ  you.  Never  tell  me  you  do  not  believe 
it:  you  do;  everybody  does.  You  burden-bearers 
and  way-makers,  whose  lot  is  cast  in  obscure  places, 
let  it  shine  through  your  life.  Never  mind  the  scale 
on  which  the  life  is  lived.  The  scale  on  which  the 
earthly  life  of  Jesus  was  lived  was  not  so  very  big 
after  all.  There  is  nothing  small  but  selfishness; 
there  is  nothing  great  but  love. 


A   LOVE   THAT    DIED 

"He  that  eateth  bread  with  me  hath  lifted  up 
his  heel  against  me." —  John  xiii.  i8. 

This  pathetic  saying  of  Jesus  is,  as  perhaps  you 
may  have  observed  during  the  reading  of  the  lesson, 
a  quotation  from  the  forty-first  Psalm.  It  has  a 
special  appropriateness  to  the  experience  of  Jesus 
as  described  in  this  chapter  and  the  parallel  accounts 
in  the  synoptical  gospels.  As  it  stands  it  is  peculiar 
to  the  fourth  gospel,  but  I  think  we  may  fairly  regard 
this  as  one  of  the  few  instances  in  which  this  particu- 
lar gospel  is  more  historical  than  the  others.  For 
the  most  part,  as  you  know,  the  fourth  gospel  does 
not  aim  at  historical  accuracy,  but  at  spiritual  in- 
struction. The  writer  takes  up  the  historical  ma- 
terial supplied  by  the  others  and  uses  it  for  his  own 
special  purpose,  along  with  some  other  materials 
which  are  not  historical  at  all,  but  merely  symboli- 
cal. Notwithstanding  this,  however,  I  think  we 
can  perceive  a  genuine  historical  element  in  this 
book  which  is  not  to  be  found  in  other  parts  of  the 
New  Testament.  I  like  to  think  that  this  particular 
element  represents  the  special  contribution  of  the 
Apostle  John.     I  do  not  mean  that  he  wrote  it, 

149 


150  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

but  that  the  writer  of  this  book,  who  belonged  to 
the  Johannine  school,  was  acquainted  with  many 
of  the  things  which  John  used  to  tell  his  followers 
concerning  his  beloved  Master.  It  is  from  this 
source,  as  I  think,  that  we  have  the  pecuhar  vivid- 
ness and  intimacy  of  the  record  of  the  last  scenes 
in  the  upper  room  before  the  betrayal  of  Jesus. 
If  I  am  right  in  this  hypothesis,  it  is  fair  to  assume 
that  our  text  represents  something  which  Jesus 
actually  said.  If  so,  this  is  the  best  and  fullest 
account  we  have  of  the  matter,  and  enables  us  to 
picture  the  scene  with  comparative  ease.  Of  those 
who  were  present  at  the  last  supper,  John  would 
be  most  likely  to  know  exactly  what  went  on,  for 
no  doubt  his  place  at  table  was  immediately  on 
the  right  of  his  Master,  while  that  of  Judas  was  on 
the  left.  This  is  borne  out  by  the  details  given  in 
this  chapter.  We  are  told  that  the  disciple  whom 
Jesus  loved  leaned  on  his  Master's  breast  at  supper, 
a  fact  which  is  easily  understandable  when  we  re- 
member that  the  custom  at  such  a  meal  was  for  the 
partakers  to  recline  on  their  left  elbow  and  use  the 
right  hand  for  dipping  in  the  dish.  The  whole 
story  is  told  so  vividly  and  with  such  fullness  of  de- 
tail that  we  are  practically  forced  to  believe  that  we 
have  here  the  testimony  of  an  eye-witness,  and  an 
eye-witness  who  must  have  been  quite  close  to  Jesus, 
so  close  as  to  be  able  to  catch  even  His  asides.  The 
others  gospels  confirm  the  account  given  here,  but 
they  do  not  present  it  with  such  striking  detail. 


A   LOVE  THAT   DIED  151 

Let  US  look  for  a  moment  at  the  circumstances  as 
narrated. 

First  we  are  told  about  the  foot-washing,  an  acted 
parable  of  great  impressiveness.  It  was  after  this 
ceremony  that  the  little  company  took  their  places 
at  table.  From  what  I  have  just  said,  it  will  readily 
be  seen  that  the  head  of  John  would  almost  touch 
the  breast  of  Jesus,  and  that  he  could  lean  upon 
Him  if  he  wished,  as  no  doubt  he  did  wish,  for  the 
attitude  would  be  quite  natural  as  a  demonstration 
of  affection.  But  it  is  a  striking  thing  that  Jesus 
could  do  the  same  to  Judas,  and  that,  in  fact,  it  was 
hardly  possible  for  the  Master  to  avoid  the  breast  of 
His  betrayer.  According  to  all  the  gospels,  Jesus 
made  the  announcement  of  the  coming  betrayal 
during  the  progress  of  the  meal,  and  in  such  a  way 
as  to  attract  general  attention.  John  alone  tells 
us  that  Jesus  Himself  was  troubled  in  spirit  at  the 
time,  and  that  the  sorrow  in  His  own  heart  at  once 
communicated  itself  to  the  rest.  Simon  Peter 
motioned  to  John  to  ask  the  Master  to  say  who  the 
betrayer  was.  No  other  gospel  records  the  answer, 
so  we  may  suppose  it  to  have  been  given  in  a  low 
voice  which  would  reach  John's  ear  alone:  "He 
it  is,  to  whom  I  shall  give  a  sop,  when  I  have  dipped 
it."  This  is  a  very  realistic  touch,  and  one  which 
incidentally  shows  the  relevance  of  our  text.  The 
handing  of  a  sop  in  this  way  was  an  act  of  courtesy 
often  performed  at  an  Oriental  meal,  and  Judas  was 
the   only   one   to   whom   Jesus   could   conveniently 


152  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

show  this  little  kindness  —  that  is,  supposing  Judas 
to  have  been  immediately  on  His  left.  What  a 
tumult  of  emotions  must  have  been  raging  in  the 
breast  of  the  betrayer  at  this  moment !  John  tells 
us  that  after  the  sop  "Satan  entered  into  him." 
There  is  a  world  of  suggestion  here.  The  offering 
of  the  sop  was  Jesus'  mute  and  last  appeal  to  a 
false  friend,  and  the  appeal  was  made  in  vain. 
Probably  no  one  else  at  table  was  able  to  see  the 
significance  of  the  action  or  to  note  the  quiet  solem- 
nity with  which  Jesus  added,  "That  thou  doest, 
do  quickly." 

The  psychology  of  the  downfall  of  Judas  would  be 
interesting  if  we  could  know  it  all.  But  there  is 
some  part  of  it  which  I  think  we  can  see  pretty 
plainly.  Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  to  ask  why 
Judas  thought  of  betraying  his  Master?  Why 
should  he  ever  have  joined  Him  at  all  if  this  was 
to  be  the  end  of  it?  What  influences  were  at  work 
to  produce  such  a  change  in  their  relationship? 
We  have  no  means  of  knowing  the  story  in  full, 
but  there  is  some  ground  for  believing  that  in  the 
main  it  was  as  follows.  Judas  was  the  only  one  of 
the  apostoHc  band  who  belonged  to  Judaea  instead 
of  to  Galilee.  There  is  some  ground  for  believing 
that  he  was  the  son  of  a  Pharisee,  and  therefore 
must  have  had  associations  with  the  Jerusalem 
party  which  had  now  turned  so  strongly  against 
Jesus  and  sought  His  death.  Judas  joined  Jesus 
at  first  because,  in  common  with  many  of  the  Phari- 


I 


A   LOVE   THAT    DIED 


153 


sees  —  who  were  zealous  patriots  and  hated  the 
Roman  power  —  he  hoped  that  Jesus  might  prove 
to  be  the  national  leader  against  the  foreigner. 
He  could  not  understand  any  other  kind  of  Messiah- 
ship,  and  therefore,  like  all  the  zealots  of  Jerusalem, 
he  became  disappointed  and  angry  when  he  found 
that  Jesus  had  no  intention  of  fulfilling  their  hopes. 
The  Pharisaic  party  had  now  determined  to  get 
rid  of  Jesus,  but  it  was  highly  desirable  to  get  Him 
into  their  power  quietly  and  secretly,  for  fear  of  the 
mob.  If  once  He  were  helpless  in  their  hands  there 
would  be  little  to  fear  from  His  supporters  after- 
wards. With  this  purpose  in  view  they  brought 
pressure  to  bear  upon  Judas,  the  only  one  of  the 
apostoHc  band  through  whom  they  could  hope  to 
effect  anything.  We  may  reasonably  infer  that  the 
father  of  Judas  was  amongst  those  who  urged  him 
to  betray  the  Master  and  pointed  out  the  advan- 
tages of  so  doing.  They  would  insist  that  Jesus 
was  only  a  weak  impostor  after  all,  a  vague  dreamer 
from  whom  no  practical  good  could  be  expected. 
They  would  tell  Judas  that  to  help  to  get  Jesus  out 
of  the  way  would  be  in  reality  a  meritorious  and 
patriotic  action.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that  by  this 
time  Judas  had  begun  to  give  way  to  covetousness 
and  dishonesty,  and  you  have  a  pretty  satisfactory 
explanation  of  his  subsequent  conduct.  He  saw 
that  Jesus  suspected  him,  and  he  felt  uneasy  in  His 
presence.  There  is  nothing  much  more  irritating 
to  the  man  who  is  living  a  false  life  than  the  con- 


154  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

sciousness  that  some  pure  soul  sees  through  him. 
It  will  either  break  him  down  in  shame  and  remorse, 
or  it  will  render  him  hard  and  desperate.  This  was 
well  illustrated  some  time  ago  in  Mr.  Vincent  Brown's 
powerful  novel,  "A  Magdalen's  Husband."  In  this 
book  we  have  the  moral  problem  suggested  by  the 
behaviour  of  Judas  worked  out  in  a  dramatic  fashion. 
The  central  characters  are  a  noble  wife  who  had 
been  rescued  from  a  hfe  of  sin,  and  her  mean-spirited 
and  cruel  husband,  who  felt  his  moral  inferiority 
to  her  so  keenly  that  he  both  loved  and  hated  her  at 
the  same  time.  More  than  once  he  was  almost 
on  the  point  of  flinging  himself  at  her  feet  and 
acknowledging  his  own  foulness  as  compared  with 
her  purity,  but  he  did  not  do  it,  and  the  end  was 
tragedy. 

Here  was  just  the  relation  in  which  Judas  stood 
to  Jesus.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  when 
he  first  joined  himself  to  the  Galilean  Teacher  his 
intentions  were  other  than  right,  so  far  as  he  saw 
the  right.  It  was  hardly  possible  for  him  to  be  long 
in  the  company  of  Jesus  without  recognising  the 
moral  loftiness  and  spiritual  greatness  of  the  Master. 
He  had  either  to  rise  towards  these  or  sink  lower 
because  of  them.  Contact  with  Jesus  would  make 
him  either  better  or  worse.  If  he  did  not  respond 
to  the  ideal  thus  presented,  he  must  reject  it,  and 
the  result  would  thus  be  a  process  of  deterioration. 
This  was  just  what  happened.  Judas  had  either 
to  rise  higher  or  sink  lower,  and  he  chose  the  latter 


A   LOVE   THAT    DIED  1 55 

without  confessing  it  even  to  himself.  He  hardened 
his  heart  against  Jesus,  while  all  the  time  telling 
himself  that  he  was  doing  so  because  Jesus  had  failed 
the  patriotic  expectations  and  the  religious  ideals 
of  the  leaders  of  the  nation.  The  crisis  was  reached 
in  the  upper  room.  Like  the  blackguardly  husband 
in  Vincent  Brown's  story,  Judas  probably  felt  for 
a  moment,  especially  after  the  foot-washing,  an 
almost  overpowering  desire  to  fling  himself  at  His 
master's  feet  and  tell  Him  everything.  But  the 
moment  passed;  his  sullen  resolve  returned,  and 
when  Jesus  made  His  dramatic  announcement, 
"One  of  you  shall  betray  me,"  he  was  able  to  look 
Him  in  the  face  with  comparative  calmness  and 
ask  the  wicked  and  hypocritical  question,  "Lord,  is 
it  I?"  As  Jesus  handed  him  the  sop  their  eyes 
met,  and  both  understood  each  other.  As  John 
puts  it,  Satan  entered  into  Judas.  The  look  with 
which  he  answered  Jesus  was  one  of  sinister  avowal, 
and  Jesus  read  it  rightly.  "That  thou  doest,  do 
quickly,"  He  said,  and  Judas  rose  immediately  and 
left  the  room.  Jesus  did  not  explain  to  the  rest. 
It  was  no  use  alarming  them ;  they  were  in  no  danger. 
He,  and  He  only,  was  the  victim.  The  friend  and 
companion  of  the  early  and  hopeful  days  of  His 
ministry  had  gone  forth  to  sell  His  blood.  Yes, 
the  Scripture  was  terribly  fulfilled,  "He  that  eateth 
bread  with  me  hath  lifted  up  his  heel  against  me." 
We  can  see  now  why  this  Old  Testament  saying 
came  home  to  Jesus  with  such  poignancy.     It  was 


156  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

because  the  sop  he  had  offered  to  Judas  had  only 
served  to  arouse  the  devil  in  him  and  precipitate 
the  tragedy.  The  Revised  Version  puts  the  sit- 
uation even  more  strongly  than  the  Authorised. 
It  is,  ''He  that  eateth  my  bread."  There  are  many 
ways  in  which  this  saying  is  seen  to  be  singularly 
appropriate  to  the  downfall  of  Judas.  For  one 
thing,  it  was  generally  held  that  to  accept  a  man's 
hospitality  while  plotting  mischief  against  him  was 
one  of  the  basest  of  actions.  To  eat  the  same  bread 
was  symbolical  of  close  friendship.  We  cannot  be 
sure  who  wrote  the  forty-first  Psalm,  but  it  is  said 
to  be  a  lament  of  Jeremiah  over  the  conduct  of  some 
who  by  the  ties  of  honour  and  friendship  ought  to  have 
stood  by  him  in  his  time  of  stress  and  danger,  and 
did  not.  This  is  a  not  uncommon  experience  in  the 
world's  history,  and  is  one  of  the  saddest  and  bitterest 
through  which  any  human  being  can  be  called  to 
pass.  There  is  no  bereavement  so  dreadful  as  that 
which  follows  from  the  death  of  love  in  the  heart 
of  a  friend.  I  dare  say  there  is  more  than  one  pres- 
ent this  morning  who  could  corroborate  that  state- 
ment. In  the  upper  room  Jesus  rcahsed  how  true 
it  was,  and  perhaps  He  knew  a  little  more  of  the 
meaning  of  the  Old  Testament  original  than  we  do 
now.  He  may  have  known  a  good  deal  of  the  life 
history  of  the  great  prophet  who  found  himself 
deserted  by  his  friend  at  the  crisis  of  his  career. 
If  so.  He  must  also  have  known  one  beautiful  thing 
which  did  something  to  relieve  the  sombrcness  of 


A    LOVE   THAT    DIED  1 57 

that  ancient  story.  Jeremiah  had  at  least  one  friend 
who  stood  by  him,  although  not  strong  enough  to 
do  much  for  him.  This  friend  was  Baruch,  the 
brave,  humble  man  who  lived  to  become  Jeremiah's 
biographer,  and  to  whom  we  owe  most  that  we  know 
about  the  prophet.  There  may  have  been  other 
friends  too,  but,  whether  or  no,  there  was  Baruch. 
The  Baruch  of  Jesus  at  this  moment  was  John. 
There  were  others,  to  be  sure  —  poor,  timid,  loving, 
childhke  Galileans  who  reverenced  Him  above  every 
other  being  on  earth.  There  were  a  few  women, 
too,  who  did  not  run  away  when  the  evil  came.  But, 
in  spite  of  these  comforting  considerations,  you  can 
understand  the  sadness  of  the  heart  of  Jesus  as  He 
thought  of  His  failure  with  Judas.  It  was  not  bread 
alone  that  He  had  given  to  Judas;  He  had  given 
Himself  without  stint.  He  had  broken  to  him  freely 
of  the  bread  of  life.  Remember,  Judas  was  not 
merely  His  follower,  but  His  friend,  a  friend  with 
whom  He  had  shared  His  deepest  soul.  I  do  not 
believe  for  a  moment  in  the  nonsensical  position 
that  Jesus  knew  from  the  first  what  the  end  of  His 
friendship  with  Judas  would  be.  He  did  not.  He 
trusted  him  fully,  and  looked  upon  him  in  the  same 
way  as  He  did  upon  the  others,  until  it  became  evi- 
dent that  Judas  was  false.  If  Jesus  had  not  felt 
this  as  a  heavy  blow  there  would  have  been  some- 
thing unreal  about  the  whole  experience.  He  did 
feel  it,  felt  it  keenly,  even  with  anguish.  John  says 
He  was  troubled  in  spirit,  and  well  He  might  be, 


158  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

for  He  had  just  buried  a  friend  in  the  deepest  grave 
that  treachery  ever  dug. 

I  have  no  desire  to  detain  you  long  in  applying 
to  our  own  lives  the  lesson  of  this  study  from  the 
life  of  Jesus,  but  I  wish  to  point  out  that  exactly 
the  same  situation  may  arise  in  the  experience  of 
any  child  of  God,  and  that  the  consolation  of  Jesus 
is  ours  too.     Let  me  show  you  what  I  mean. 

Is  there  some  one  here  this  morning  who  knows 
that  extremity  of  suffering,  the  suffering  of  giving 
your  best  and  doing  your  best  for  one  whom  at  first 
you  thought  worthy  but  now  know  to  be  false? 
This  is  one  of  the  hardest  and  most  inexplicable 
things  that  can  ever  torture  the  human  soul.  For 
a  while  you  know  the  joy  of  a  true  friendship  or  a 
love  so  great  and  pure  that  it  seems  Divine.  Then, 
little  by  little,  you  see  the  deterioration  setting  in, 
the  breakdown  of  a  soul.  The  greater  your  love 
before,  the  greater  your  agony  now.  You  wonder 
whether  you  ever  knew  your  friend  at  all,  or  whether 
your  faith  in  him  was  but  "the  baseless  fabric  of 
a  dream."  It  shakes  your  confidence  in  life  to  find 
that  the  human  heart  can  change  in  this  way.  One 
would  think  that  in  God's  universe  such  a  thing 
would  never  be  possible  —  once  a  friend,  always  a 
friend.  But,  alas  !  it  is  possible.  The  case  becomes 
worse  when  you  have  made  your  friend  the  possessor 
of  your  soul,  only  to  find  that  he  can  take  it  and  wring 
it,  as  Judas  wrung  the  soul  of  Jesus  when  he  bar- 
gained with  the  Pharisees  for  His  blood.     Many 


A   LOVE   THAT   DIED  1 59 

fine  theological  theories  have  been  spun  about  the 
agony  of  Jesus  in  Gethsemane.  If  you  will  only 
try  to  put  yourself  in  the  sufferer's  place  you  will 
know  of  a  certainty  that  one  part  of  that  agony,  and 
not  the  least  part  of  it,  a  very  human  part,  was  His 
mourning  over  the  friend  who  had  betrayed  Him 
and  the  thought  of  the  love  that  was  dead. 

While  I  was  away  in  Cornwall  I  came  across  a 
deserted  cottage,  a  mere  cabin,  standing  alone  on  a 
wild  moor.  It  was  the  most  desolate-looking  object 
in  the  whole  landscape.  The  roof  was  stripped 
away,  the  rafters  hung  broken  and  dilapidated,  and 
the  windows  were  gone.  But  the  most  pathetic 
thing  of  all  was  the  ashes  on  the  hearth-stone,  the 
tiny  remains  of  what  had  once  been  the  domestic 
fire.  Here  was  a  picture  of  many  a  human  ex- 
perience. There  is  nothing  much  sadder.  You 
admit  a  man  or  a  woman  to  the  inner  sanctuary  of 
your  being,  the  hearth-stone  of  your  soul,  and  there 
you  kindle  the  fire  of  a  sacred  friendship,  only  to 
find  that  the  ashes  are  left  in  the  ruined  fabric  of 
your  hopes  at  last. 

I  have  a  room  whereinto  no  one  enters 

Save  I  myself  alone; 
There  sits  a  blessed  memory  on  a  throne, 

There  my  life  centres. 

If  any  should  force  entrance  he  might  see  there 

One  buried,  yet  not  dead, 
Before  whose  face  I  no  more  bow  my  head, 

Or  bend  my  knee  there. 


l6o  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

If  this  should  be  the  experience  of  any  of  you  — ■ 
and  I  dare  say  it  is  so  to  some  extent  with  a  good 
many  —  I  want  you  to  take  a  good  look  at  Jesus 
on  the  eve  of  Calvary.  You  could  not  Icam  a  better 
lesson  for  Passion  week.  There  is  no  man  among 
you  who  may  not  need  it  some  day,  even  if  you  do 
not  need  it  now.  Observe  that  Jesus  said  not  one 
reproachful  word  of  Judas,  although  His  solenm 
words  of  pity  were  dreadful  in  their  intensity.  His 
own  love  was  not  dead,  whether  that  of  Judas  was 
or  not.  Did  He  ever  pray  for  him  again?  Yes, 
I  think  He  did.  We  do  not  know  all  Jesus  said  in 
Gethsemane.  If  He  came  out  of  the  upper  room 
troubled  in  spirit  because  of  Judas,  He  took  the 
thought  of  Judas  with  Him  when  He  went  to  ask 
His  heavenly  Father  to  spare  Him  the  last  dreadful 
ordeal,  in  which  the  kiss  of  Judas  was  not  the  least 
dreadful  part.  And  whether  he  prayed  for  Judas 
in  Gethsemane,  He  certainly  did  on  Calvary. 
"Father,  forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they 
do,"  included  Judas  —  Judas  most  of  all  perhaps. 

I  do  not  think  that  prayer  was  a  failure.  It  could 
not  be  a  failure.  God  has  more  worlds  than  one  in 
which  to  work  out  the  mighty  scheme  of  redemption. 
The  love  which  Judas  bore  his  Master  died  in  his 
own  selfishness.  But  we  may  trust  that  somewhere 
and  somehow  the  spirit  of  Christ,  the  spirit  of 
suffering  love,  gave  it  resurrection.  If  any  of 
you  have  come  to  a  Calvary  caused  by  the  Judas 
spirit  in  any  of  its  thousand  forms,  take  care  that 


A   LOVE   THAT    DIED  i6l 

you  meet  it  as  Jesus  did,  for  if  you  do  you  are  already 
master  of  the  worst  that  evil  can  inflict,  and  you  have 
followed  and  attacked  it  in  the  very  soul  that  has 
caused  your  pain.  Trust  God  for  all  the  rest.  Life 
is  far  larger  than  the  peep  you  get  at  it  here  on  earth ; 
but  even  though  you  track  it  through  a  million  uni- 
verses, you  will  never  find  it  to  be  anything  less  than 
love.  No  tomb  can  bury  love  for  ever,  for  love  is 
God. 


THE    SON    OF   PERDITION 

"  While  I  was  with  them  in  the  world,  I  kept 
them  in  Thy  name ;  those  that  Thou  gavest  me 
I  have  kept,  and  none  of  them  is  lost,  but  the 
son  of  perdition."  —  John  xvii.  12. 

This  is  one  of  the  hard  sayings  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  all  the  more  so  because  it  is  put  into  the 
mouth  of  Jesus.  One  of  the  most  pathetic  and  ap- 
parently hopeless  things  in  the  gospel  narratives  is 
the  tragic  fate  of  Judas.  I  do  not  mean  merely  the 
way  in  which  the  betrayer  of  Jesus  put  an  end  to 
his  own  life;  I  mean  the  moral  dereliction  implied 
in  it.  Judas  began  well  and  ended  miserably,  and 
the  New  Testament  writers  are  silent  in  regard  to 
the  possibihty  —  even  the  remote  possibility  —  of 
a  recovery  for  this  lost  soul.  There  is  no  suggestion 
of  sympathy  or  pity  for  him.  In  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  Peter  is  represented  as  describing  his  end, 
but,  so  far  as  we  can  discern  from  the  printed  page, 
there  is  no  trace  of  commiseration  for  the  poor  lapsed 
apostle  who  had  chosen  such  a  dreadful  doom.  I 
do  not  think  that  either  Peter  or  the  apostoHc  band 
could  really  be  callous  in  such  a  matter.  It  would 
hardly  be  fitting,  considering  their  own  behaviour, 
especially  that  of  Peter  himself,  on  the  night  when 

162 


THE    SON    OF   PERDITION  163 

Jesus  was  arrested.  Besides,  I  suppose  men  at  that 
time  must  have  been  something  hke  what  men  are 
now;  and,  if  so,  they  could  hardly  have  viewed  the 
fall  of  a  comrade  in  such  a  way  as  to  retain  for  him 
no  feeling  save  that  of  detestation.  They  must  have 
mourned  over  him,  and  all  the  more  so  because  they 
had  fallen  themselves. 

But  what  are  we  to  suppose  was  the  real  attitude 
of  Jesus  in  the  matter?     This  is  a  crucial  question, 
and  one  in  which  I  want  to  arrive  at  the  truth  if 
it  be  possible  to  find  it.     In  a  sermon  on  the  Thurs- 
day before  Good  Friday  I  gave  to  you  as  careful 
a  psychological  analysis  of  the  relations  of  Jesus 
and  Judas  as  was  possible  in  the  time  at  our  disposal. 
I  think  we  then  saw  reason  to  suppose  that  Jesus 
was  very  far  indeed  from  being  indifferent  as  to 
what  might  happen  to  Judas,  or  through  Judas  to 
Himself.     If  I   interpret   the   situation  rightly,   no 
small  part  of  His  mental  agony  afterwards  in  Geth- 
semane  was  caused  by  the  trouble  He  felt  at  the 
base  and  wicked  conduct  of  one  who  had  once  been 
His  friend.     How  bitterly  the  words  of  the  forty- 
first  Psalm  must  have  come  home  to  him  as  He 
quoted  them  at  the  supper-table !     "He  that  eateth 
my  bread  hath  lifted  up  his  heel  against  me."     Here 
is  one  of  those  suggestive  little  touches  which  help 
to  reveal  to  us  the  human  pathos  and  intensity  of 
the   last   hours   of  the   earthly   ministry   of   Jesus. 
When,  with  this  scene  in  mind,  we  read  the  words 
of  our  text,  they  must  necessarily  sound  very  stern 


164  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

and  even  terrible.  They  do  not  seem  to  contain 
a  scintilla  of  hope  for  Judas;  and,  what  is  more, 
they  do  not  at  first  sight  seem  to  exhibit  the  smallest 
compassion  for  him.  The  betrayer  has  chosen  his 
course;  Jesus  pronounces  a  woe  upon  him,  and 
that  is  all. 

But  is  it  all?  I  think  not,  and  I  think  too  that  I 
can  see  good  reason  why  not.  I  should  like  you  to 
understand  before  we  go  any  further  that  in  selecting 
this  subject  this  morning  I  am  not  influenced  merely 
by  its  intrinsic  interest  or  its  psychological  subtlety; 
I  have  deliberately  chosen  it  because  I  believe  it 
bears  immediately  and  strongly  upon  the  experience 
of  a  good  many  who  are  present  this  morning.  You 
will  see  what  I  mean  when  we  come  to  apply  it. 
Let  me  assure  you,  too,  that  in  dealing  with  it  I 
have  not  the  smallest  desire  to  juggle  with  the  words 
of  Scripture  in  order  to  make  out  a  case  for  mercy 
in  this  one  specific  instance.  What  I  shall  hope  to 
show  you  is  that  there  is  a  better  way  of  stating  the 
case  than  by  appealing  to  the  letter  of  Scripture. 
The  case  of  Judas  is  by  no  means  an  isolated  one, 
and  if  it  were  not  for  the  special  horror  traditionally 
attaching  to  the  supposition  that  to  betray  Jesus 
was  immeasurably  worse  than  to  betray  any  one 
else,  we  should  see  this.  Perhaps  when  we  look 
into  the  matter  we  shall  find  that  Judas  was  not  so 
very  much  worse  than  ourselves.  Perhaps,  too, 
we  shall  realise  that  the  failure  of  Jesus  in  his  case 
has  had  its  parallels  since,  and  that  something  is  to 


THE   SON   OF   PERDITION  165 

be  said  for  the  view  that  that  failure  was  not  so 
absolute  as  appears  on  the  surface.  In  the  long 
run  such  a  spirit  as  that  of  Jesus  must  know  itself 
victorious  over  the  worst  that  human  baseness  can 
do,  and  its  triumph  will  not  be  revenge,  but  the 
recovery  of  the  lost  to  the  fellowship  of  love. 

Now  let  us  scrutinise  this  passage  for  a  moment. 
It  may  be  that  in  its  present  form  it  did  not  proceed 
from  the  hps  of  Jesus.  But,  as  I  have  previously 
tried  to  show,  there  is  a  considerable  element  in 
these  upper  room  discourses  which  apparently 
could  only  have  come  from  the  testimony  of  one  who 
was  there  and  heard  them.  The  writer  of  this  gospel 
has  worked  up  this  oral  tradition,  in  accordance 
with  his  method,  in  such  a  way  as  to  set  forth  clearly 
and  emphatically  the  particular  spiritual  truth  he 
has  in  view.  He  wants  us  to  realise  that  the  glori- 
fied Christ  is  the  very  life  of  those  who  are  trying 
to  live  for  God  on  earth.  His  main  object  is  to  in- 
sist upon  the  value  of  this  mystic  union  between 
the  individual  soul  and  the  eternal  Christ.  Do 
not  forget  this,  for  it  is  important.  Nevertheless, 
I  am  sure  I  can  see  here  the  record  of  a  very  tender 
and  beautiful  episode  which  probably  represents 
what  the  Apostle  John  must  have  told  his  disciples 
over  and  over  again  concerning  the  last  scenes  in  the 
upper  room.  I  do  not  mean  that  John  wrote  it. 
You  remember,  no  doubt,  that  this  is  the  only  gospel 
which  gives  minutely  and  in  vivid  detail  the  situation 
at  the  table  when  Jesus  accused  Judas  of  intending 


l66  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

to  betray  Him.  John  —  and  I  think  it  must  be 
John  —  describes  the  pathetic  appeal  of  the  Master 
to  the  betrayer  in  the  offering  of  the  sop.  He  tells 
us  that  Jesus  was  "troubled  in  spirit."  How 
natural !  How  indisputably  true  !  He  tells  us  of 
the  quiet  way  in  which  the  Master,  reading  accurately 
the  sullen  defiance  in  the  eyes  of  Judas,  bids  him  go 
and  get  his  hellish  work  over  as  quickly  as  possible. 
Then  came  the  beautiful  parting  words  contained  in 
the  fourteenth  chapter,  followed  by  the  prayer  in 
the  seventeenth.  It  is  not  likely  that  John  would 
remember  the  exact  words  of  this  prayer,  but  such 
a  prayer  there  must  have  been;  the  occasion  called 
for  it;  and  Jesus  knew  He  was  saying  good-bye. 
Some  of  the  phrases  in  this  prayer  would  remain  for 
ever  in  the  minds  of  those  who  heard  it.  The  sad 
intensity  of  Jesus  at  the  moment  would  be  enough 
to  make  it  so.  Is  it  likely  that  Judas  would  occupy 
no  place  in  His  imagination  under  the  circumstances  ? 
While  this  prayer  was  being  prayed  the  fallen  one 
was  on  his  way  to  fetch  the  murderers.  Jesus 
knew  it;  John  knew  it,  if  the  account  given  in  this 
gospel  be  correct.  No  one  else  knew  it.  If  Jesus 
said  anything  about  Judas,  John  would  remember 
it  for  certain.  The  words  of  our  text  may  not  ex- 
actly reproduce  what  Jesus  said  and  John  remem- 
bered, but  in  spirit  they  cannot  be  far  removed  from 
the  original. 

"Not  one  of  them  is  lost  but  the  son  of  perdition." 
How  hard  it  sounds !     Is  it  really  so  very  hard  ? 


THE    SON    OF    PERDITION  167 

I  wish  we  had  some  way  of  reproducing  the  exact 
force  of  the  Greek  original,  and  I  think  you  would 
find  that  the  saying  is  very  far  from  being  hard; 
it  is  the  mournful  plaint  of  wounded  love,  the  dirge 
of  a  friendship.  It  is  even  more  than  this,  unless 
I  am  utterly  mistaken;  it  is  actually  a  prayer,  a 
prayer  prayed  in  the  shadow  of  failure,  a  prayer 
from  which  hope  has  well-nigh  gone,  but  still  a 
prayer.  The  nearest  approach  I  can  give  you  to 
the  spirit  of  the  original  is  to  ask  you  to  dismiss 
from  your  minds  the  ugly  word  "perdition,"  and 
substitute  for  it  the  simple  word  "lost."  The 
reason  why  I  suggest  this  is  that  the  word  translated 
"lost"  in  the  former  part  of  the  sentence  is  from 
the  same  root  as  the  word  translated  "perdition" 
in  the  second.  Just  see  what  a  difference  this 
makes.  "None  of  them  is  lost,  but  the  child  of 
loss,"  or,  "the  lost  child."  This  is  actually  the 
translation  which  is  given  in  Luther's  German 
Bible,  "the  lost  child."  I  do  not  wish  to  press 
this  too  far.  It  is  quite  probable  that  the  phrase, 
"the  son  of  destruction,"  was  proverbial  among  the 
Jews  to  describe  any  case  of  moral  ruin.  But  what 
I  should  like  to  insist  upon  here  is  that  the  words 
do  not  carry  with  them  any  sinister  suggestion  of 
inexorable  reprobation.  Jesus  was  not  tearing 
Judas  out  of  His  heart  when  He  prayed  this  prayer ; 
He  was  just  lamenting  over  His  friend  and  telling 
His  Father  about  the  sorrow.  Try  to  put  yourself 
in  His   place.     Remember  what  had   gone  before 


l68  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

—  His  pathetic  appeal  to  the  betrayer,  His  trouble 
of  heart  when  He  saw  what  Judas  meant  to  do  — 
and  you  will  realise  the  spirit  in  which  He  prayed. 
How  would  you  have  felt  under  like  circumstances? 
You  would  feel  intensely  the  horror  of  it  all,  and  the 
more  you  had  loved  your  friend  the  more  certain 
you  would  be  to  lift  your  burdened  heart  to  God  in 
prayer  about  the  terrible  thing  which  had  come  to 
pass.  Jesus  went  on  praying  for  the  rest,  but  He 
could  not  forbear  interpolating  the  cry,  "There  is 
a  lost  child  !  I  have  lost  none  save  that  one,  but, 
oh  !  the  heartbreak  of  it !  There  is  one  lost  child." 
The  allusion  which  immediately  follows,  "That 
the  Scripture  might  be  fulfilled,"  is  only  a  reference 
to  the  passage  already  quoted  from  the  forty-first 
Psalm,  "He  that  eateth  my  bread  hath  lifted  up  his 
heel  against  me."  The  translators  have  given 
another  reference  in  the  margin,  but  they  are  wrong ; 
the  only  one  we  are  justified  in  giving  is  the  one  which 
Jesus  Himself  had  already  employed.  The  Scrip- 
ture was  fulfilled  just  in  the  same  way  as  many  a 
proverb  is  fulfilled  in  modem  experience.  A  few 
nights  ago  I  happened  to  be  quoting  Chaucer's  well- 
known  lines: 

If  thou  be  poor,  thy  brother  hateth  thee, 
And  all  thy  friendes  flee  from  thee,  alas ! 

Some  one  present  instantly  remarked,  "Ah,  how 
frequently  that  is  true!"  This  was  just  the  spirit 
in  which   Jesus  made  His  reference  to  Scripture. 


THE    SON    OF    PERDITION  1 69 

How  sadly  true  that  the  friend  of  happier  and  more 
hopeful  days  had  now  become  His  enemy  !  He  did 
not  mean,  and  could  not  mean,  that  the  Scripture 
had  hterally  foretold  this  particular  betrayal,  and 
that  it  had  had  to  come  about  by  a  sort  of  fatalism. 
We  can  see  at  once,  too,  what  was  the  kind  of  loss 
alluded  to  here.  It  was  the  loss  of  a  friend,  in- 
volving as  it  did  the  loss  of  a  soul,  of  which  Jesus 
was  thinking.  There  was  no  suggestion  of  a  per- 
dition in  the  modem  sense.  The  only  thing  that 
troubled  Jesus  was  that  Judas  —  who  was  still 
alive,  remember  !  —  had  become  not  only  a  traitor, 
but  a  degraded  soul.  He  had  falsified  the  expecta- 
tions of  his  Friend  and  Master;  he  had  fallen  from 
a  position  that  promised  much.  As  I  have  said 
before,  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  sincerity 
of  Judas  when  first  he  joined  himself  to  Jesus.  He 
really  meant  it ;  and  no  doubt  he  had  caught  some- 
thing of  the  enthusiasm  of  the  young  Israel  of  his 
day,  who  hoped  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  proph- 
esied by  the  Baptist,  was  now  really  at  hand,  and 
that  Jesus,  this  wonderful  Jesus,  whom  he  loved  and 
admired  so  much,  would  prove  to  be  the  divinely 
appointed  means  of  realising  it.  He  did  not  think 
that  now;  his  early  enthusiasm  was  dead,  and, 
under  the  influence  of  his  Pharisaic  connections,  he 
had  consented  to  hand  Jesus  over  to  their  cruel 
power.  I  hardly  think  it  possible  that  he  foresaw 
the  tragic  ending  of  that  betrayal;  and  one  thing 
at  least  is  certain  —  he  was   capable  of  remorse, 


lyo  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

which  shows  he  was  not  entirely  dead  to  better 
feeling.  Judas  was  the  dupe  of  the  Pharisees,  and 
the  scheming  priests  were  greater  criminals  than  he. 
If  he  had  been  utterly  bad  Jesus  would  have  seen 
through  him  at  first;  and  the  fact  that  He  did  not 
do  so,  but  actually  chose  him  as  a  member  of  the 
apostolic  band,  is  proof  positive  that  Judas  must  have 
possessed  and  exhibited  a  certain  promise  of  good. 
We  can  see  now  why  Jesus  named  him  in  this  vale- 
dictory prayer  with  such  anguish  of  spirit.  Here 
was  a  friend  gone  wrong ;  here  was  a  golden  morning 
swallowed  up  in  a  midnight  of  sorrow  and  shame. 

And  was  this  prayer  in  vain?  Was  this  the  last 
word  about  Judas?  Was  all  the  friendship,  all  the 
solicitude  of  Jesus,  wasted  upon  this  man?  Did  all 
the  sweet  fellowship  of  previous  days  go  for  nothing  ? 
I  cannot  think  so;  it  is  impossible  to  think  so,  even 
if  Scripture  is  silent  upon  the  point.  If  such  a  failure 
were  possible  on  the  part  of  Jesus,  then  some  of  you 
who  are  hstening  to  me  at  this  moment  will  never 
know  the  balm  of  healing  for  one  of  the  greatest 
sorrows  that  the  human  heart  can  know,  the  loss 
in  life  of  those  who  are  dearer  to  you  than  life  itself. 
Will  you  in  this  connection  allow  me  to  read  a  few 
sentences  from  a  letter  written  to  me  by  a  man  of 
culture  and  spirituality  who  comes  to  the  City 
Temple  sometimes?  "Let  us  suppose  Jesus  had 
not  died  when  He  did,  and  had  loved  Judas;  had 
been  treacherously  wronged  by  him,  yet  yearned 
over  him  with  a  love  that  could  not  change.     There 


THE    SON    OF    PERDITION  171 

are  many,  many,  in  this  dark  world,  besides  the 
often-cited  mother  praying  for  the  erring  son,  who 
are  tempted  to  say,  'Of  what  avail  is  prayer  for 
another?'  and,  if  of  no  avail,  then  intercessory 
prayer,  so  it  seems  to  me,  is  just  so  much  superfluous 
expenditure  of  emotion." 

I  do  not  know  whether  there  is  a  personal  experi- 
ence indicated  here,  but  I  am  quite  certain  there 
must  be  some  present  who  are  not  strangers  to  what 
is  described.  Some  of  you  have  played  the  part  of 
Judas;  others  have  suffered  from  the  treachery  of 
Judas,  but,  like  Jesus,  have  loved  sincerely  and  suf- 
fered in  proportion  to  the  greatness  of  the  love. 
What  you  want  to  know  is  whether  the  prayer  of 
Jesus  was  fruitless.  I  repeat  that  the  behaviour 
of  Judas  can  be  paralleled  over  and  over  again  in 
human  experience.  Judas  did  not  know  Jesus  as 
Christians  know  Him  now.  All  that  Judas  saw 
in  Jesus  was  very  much  what  you  and  I  see  in  the 
best  and  noblest  man  of  our  acquaintance.  When 
he  betrayed  Jesus  he  did  not  consciously  betray 
the  Lord  of  life  and  glory;  in  a  sense  he  did  worse 
— he  broke  the  heart  of  his  friend  and  benefactor, 
he  trampled  upon  the  noblest  soul  he  had  ever  known. 
Have  you  ever  done  that?  If  so  you  have  been 
guilty  of  the  crime  of  Judas,  neither  more  nor  less. 
If  for  reasons  too  base  and  selfish  to  acknowledge 
even  to  yourself  you  have  ever  nailed  a  beautiful 
love  on  a  cross,  you  are  a  Judas ;  if  there  is  no  hope 
for  him  there  is  no  hope  for  you.     To  crucify  the 


172  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

Lord  of  Glory,  knowing  what  you  are  doing,  would 
not  be  so  bad  as  to  crucify  a  tender  human  love  that 
had  nothing  to  offer  you  but  itself.  To  defy  the 
God  of  Heaven  would  not  be  so  great  a  sin  as  to 
crush  and  destroy  some  poor  child  of  innocence 
who  loved  and  trusted  you  more  than  you  are  worth. 
Talk  about  sin  against  God  !  Men  do  not  commonly 
shake  their  fist  in  God's  face;  that  would  be  the 
act  of  a  madman.  What  they  do  is  to  take  advan- 
tage of  human  weakness  and  unselfishness,  and  crush 
the  joy  out  of  it.  This  is  what  Judas  did,  and  this 
is  what  we  do.  If  Judas  had  seen  Jesus  as  Christian 
experience  sees  Him  now,  he  would  not  have  dared 
to  betray  Him;  he  betrayed  Him  because  he  thought 
He  was  weaker  than  Caiaphas.  He  was  wrong,  of 
course;  calculating  self-interest  is  always  wrong. 
But  he  was  no  more  wrong  in  his  reckoning  than 
you  are  in  yours  if  you  have  been  playing  the  part 
of  a  Judas.  You  are  a  Judas  if  your  ingratitude  or 
worldliness  has  brought  a  father's  grey  hairs  in 
sorrow  to  the  grave.  You  are  a  Judas  if  you  have 
shadowed  some  good  woman's  life  so  that  in  her 
anguish  she  wishes  she  had  never  known  you,  and 
rues  the  day  she  was  born.  You  are  a  Judas  if, 
instead  of  a  protector,  your  child  has  found  in  you 
a  bad  example,  an  influence  overshadowing  his 
whole  career.  You  are  a  Judas  if  you  have  ever 
stabbed  a  friend  in  the  back  or  failed  him  in  his 
hour  of  trial.  You  are  a  Judas  if  you  have  ever 
repaid    generosity    with    ingratitude,    self-sacrifice 


THE    SON    OF    PERDITION  173 

with  self-interest,  loving  solicitude  with  indifference 
or  cold  forgetfulness.  Understand  that  there  is 
no  getting  round  the  subject  by  pleading  that  you 
have  never  betrayed  Jesus,  the  life  and  light  of  the 
world.  Yes,  you  have;  you  have  betrayed  Jesus 
wherever  and  whenever  you  have  betrayed  innocent 
blood  for  your  own  wicked  ends.  You  have  be- 
trayed Jesus  when  you  have  betrayed  love  in  any 
form.  Make  no  excuses;  face  the  facts.  You  are 
a  son  of  perdition  in  the  very  sense  in  which  that 
phrase  is  employed  in  my  text.  Whether  there 
is  a  hell  beyond  the  tomb  or  not,  you  will  have  to 
reckon  with  hell  somewhere,  just  as  Judas  did. 
When  Jesus  uttered  the  lament  contained  in  these 
words  He  was  not  thinking  of  hell,  but  of  the  living 
Judas,  who  was  even  then  living  the  life  of  hell  and 
doing  the  deeds  of  hell.  That  man  was  a  lost  soul, 
lost  to  purity  and  nobleness,  lost  to  generous  aims, 
lost  to  the  very  things  which  at  first  had  charmed  and 
drawn  him  in  the  spirit  and  character  of  Jesus. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  all  this.  If  I  could 
find  Judas  in  this  place  this  morning,  no  doubt  I 
could  find  the  experience  of  Jesus  too.  Is  there  any 
one  here  who  knows  what  it  is  to  suffer  at  the  hands 
of  one  for  whom  you  would  willingly  give  all  you 
possess,  even  Hfe  itself?  Do  you  know  a  son  of 
perdition,  a  lost  child,  as  Jesus  calls  him,  without 
whom  heaven  would  be  no  heaven  to  you?  Has 
any  one  robbed  you  of  your  hope  in  life,  yet  without 
killing  your  regard  for  him?     Have  you  ever  been 


174  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

bitterly  disappointed  in  man  or  woman  while  still 
continuing  to  feel  that  life  holds  no  higher  object 
for  you  than  that  of  saving  them  from  what  they  are  ? 
Do  you  remember  that  awful  shock  wherewith  you 
discovered  the  utter  hollowness  and  faithlessness  of 
the  friend  wherein  you  trusted?  Perhaps  you  have 
never  got  over  the  dreadfulness  of  that  experience, 
the  discovery  that  what  you  took  for  truth  was  but 
a  cruel  he.  And  yet  your  soul  goes  on  clinging  to 
him  or  her  who  has  thus  opened  the  floodgates  of 
sorrow  upon  you.  Somehow  in  this  world  we  do 
not  commonly  love  those  best  who  have  done  the 
most  for  us;  often  enough  we  love  those  best  who 
have  caused  us  the  most  pain.  I  dare  say  you  all 
know  how  true  that  is.  Well  now,  if  there  be  any 
one  here  who  is  praying  the  prayer  of  anguished  love 
for  a  son  of  perdition,  I  want  to  put  your  hand  in 
that  of  Jesus,  and  to  help  you  to  feel  the  power  of 
His  spirit  in  your  prayer.  "A  lost  child!"  A  lost 
friend !  What  infinite  pathos  in  the  phrase !  And 
yet  Jesus  must  afterwards  have  come  to  know  that 
nothing  is  ever  lost,  and  no  good  is  ever  wasted  in 
God's  wide  universe.  One  thing  that  this  generation 
needs  to  learn  is  that  there  is  no  stopping  place  for 
redeeming  love,  either  on  this  side  of  death  or  on 
the  other,  short  of  absolute  victory.  Love  will  pur- 
sue its  object  into  the  jaws  of  hell.  Let  every 
widowed  heart  take  courage.  All  love  is  divine, 
and  therefore  eternal;  nothing  else  is  eternal,  and 
therefore  love  is  the  last  word  in  the  relations  of 


THE   SON   OF   PERDITION  175 

man  and  God  or  man  and  man.  All  love  is  from 
and  towards  the  infinite  reality,  and  cannot  miss 
its  goal.  There  is  no  waste  and  there  is  no  failure, 
for  love  is  God. 

In  Derbyshire  there  is  a  strange  underground 
river  in  a  place  called  Speedwell  Mine.  I  dare  say 
you  have  all  heard  of  it.  It  follows  a  mysterious 
course,  running  along  under  the  surface  of  the  earth 
for  three-quarters  of  a  mile  or  so,  and  then  plunging 
straight  down  into  a  yawning  abyss,  in  which  it 
appears  to  be  utterly  swallowed  up.  No  one  has 
yet  been  able  to  find  an  outlet  for  that  river,  but 
every  one  knows  that,  whether  underground  or  above 
ground,  it  must  ultimately  reach  the  ocean.  That 
volume  of  water  can  never  be  wasted ;  it  must  obey 
the  law  of  its  own  being  and  make  for  its  source  in 
the  mighty  deep.  If  it  had  been  a  mere  trickling 
rill  it  might  have  been  lost  on  the  way,  but,  thanks 
to  all  the  streamlets  which  have  flowed  down  into 
that  Derbyshire  dale  to  swell  its  volume,  that  is 
impossible.  It  is  too  great  to  be  lost,  and  the  larger 
the  number  of  the  streamlets  that  pour  down  from 
the  hills,  and  plunge  into  the  abyss  along  with  it, 
the  swifter  and  more  certain  will  be  its  rush  for  the 
distant  sea,  even  though  no  human  eye  may  ever 
behold  the  confluence  at  last. 

Here  is  a  symbol  of  the  prayer  of  baffled  love 
reaching  even  beyond  death.  No  intercession  is  ever 
made  in  vain.  No  life  ever  pours  itself  out  for  any 
other  either  in  deed  or  word  without  thrusting  it 


176         NEW  THEOLOGY  SERMONS 

upon  God.  He  for  whom  you  agonise  and  strive 
may  plunge  into  the  dark  abyss  of  moral  failure 
and  hardness  of  soul,  but  that  is  not  the  end.  Let 
your  love  plunge  there  too  and  reinforce  the  good 
that  is  never  wholly  absent  from  any  human  soul, 
however  sunken  in  evil.  How  can  that  descent 
of  love  ever  fail?  It  came  from  God,  and  unto  God 
it  must  return.  Here  its  portion  may  be  failure 
and  ignominy,  but  in  the  full  ocean  of  eternal  love 
we  shall  know  that  the  failure  was  never  more  than 
relative.  Just  as  certain  as  it  is  that  no  sin  ever 
goes  unpunished,  so  no  love  ever  goes  without  its 
reward.  Whatever  else  is  true,  that  is  true.  Trust 
it  for  all  in  all. 


THE    MISTAKE    OF   SIN 

"What  fruit  had  ye  then  in  those  things 
whereof  ye  are  now  ashamed?  for  the  end  of 
those  things  is  death."  —  Rom.  vi.  21. 

This  question  and  answer  shed  a  flood  of  light 
upon  what  we  may  call  the  psychology  of  sin.  It 
tells  us  a  great  deal  about  the  underlying  motive 
leading  to  sin,  and  points  out  in  the  plainest  terms 
that  the  results  are  disappointing.  The  sinner  aims 
at  one  thing,  and  gets  another ;  he  tries  for  life,  and 
finds  death. 

This  statement  is  illustrated  in  the  context  by  a 
reference  to  characteristic  sins  of  the  Romans  to 
whom  Paul  was  writing.  At  this  time  the  imperial 
city  was  entering  upon  the  period  of  internal  decay, 
which  showed  itself  first  in  an  inordinate  love  of 
luxury  and  fleshly  indulgence.  Perhaps  the  ma- 
jority of  those  to  whom  Paul  addressed  this  epistle 
were  Jewish  Christians  resident  in  Rome,  but  no 
doubt  there  were  some  among  them  belonging  to 
other  races,  and  all  of  them  would  be  more  or  less 
familiar  with  the  more  scandalous  vices  of  the  time 
and  place.  Not  a  few  of  them,  probably,  had  them- 
selves been  addicted  to  these  vices  before  their  con- 
version. Paul  now  appeals  to  their  past  experience. 
N  177 


178  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

He  asks  what  they  had  gained  by  their  self-indul- 
gence, and  himself  supplies  the  answer  —  death. 
By  implication,  as  you  see,  he  suggests  that  they 
must  originally  have  expected  something  different, 
if  they  thought  about  the  matter  at  all.  At  any  rate, 
when  they  yielded  themselves  to  sin  they  had  not 
deliberately  and  of  set  purpose  chosen  death.  By 
"death"  he  means,  no  doubt,  a  physical  fact  and  its 
moral  analogy.  You  all  know  the  case  he  has  in 
mind.  If  a  man  takes  to  drink  or  sensuality  the 
results  show  before  long  in  a  poisoning  or  putre- 
faction of  the  physical  frame.  He  becomes  loath- 
some, debilitated,  brutish  —  the  outer  man  is  dying. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  behaviour  does  shorten  his 
life;   "the  end  of  these  things  is  death." 

But  this  is  not  all.  Along  with  the  physical  there 
goes  a  moral  deterioration  too.  You  have  only  to 
look  at  the  man  to  see  it.  The  marks  of  dissipation 
in  any  human  face  are  always  the  signs  of  the  death 
of  finer  instincts  and  nobler  feelings.  What  was  at 
first  done  with  uneasiness  under  the  protest  of  con- 
science becomes  in  time  the  natural  habit ;  the  best 
is  dying  or  dead.  I  suppose  we  all  know  of  melan- 
choly instances  in  which  Paul's  words  are  seen  to 
be  only  too  true  to-day.  In  addition  to  the  death 
of  this  better  self,  too,  there  is  a  death  of  joy.  The 
very  gratification  which  the  sinner  seeks  by  his  wrong- 
doing fails  him  in  the  end ;  he  cannot  keep  it  long. 
This  is  the  experience  to  which  Paul  appeals  in  our 
text.     "Well,"  he  says  in  effect,  "you  have  had  your 


THE   MISTAKE   OF   SIN  179 

fling.  You  have  gratified  your  selfish,  baser  in- 
stincts. What  was  it  worth?  What  has  it  brought 
you?  Would  you  not  all  say  that  in  every  sense 
of  the  word  the  end  of  those  things  is  death?" 

It  seems  to  me  that  we  have  here  an  excellent  and 
suggestive  analysis  of  the  universal  experience  of 
mankind  in  regard  to  sin.  Sin  and  death  imply 
each  other,  just  as  love  and  life  imply  each  other; 
and  yet  sin  always  begins  as  a  bid  for  hfe.  I  dare 
say  you  all  know  a  much-quoted  and  much-maligned 
sentence  of  mine,  that  sin  is  a  blundering  quest  for 
God.  Those  who  are  horrified,  or  pretend  to  be 
horrified,  by  that  saying  usually  leave  out  the  word 
"blundering"  in  order  to  make  it  appear  as  black 
as  possible.  And  yet  that  statement  is  the  simple 
truth,  and  is  implied  in  this  very  text.  I  do  not 
mean  that  sin  is  an  innocent  quest  for  anything. 
I  do  not  mean  that  the  sinner  is  conscious  of  seeking 
God,  or  indeed  of  seeking  anything  other  than  his 
own  self-gratification;  but  all  the  same  the  thing 
he  really  wants,  and  is  trying  to  get  in  a  selfish  way, 
is  the  Hfe  of  God,  for  there  is  no  other  life.  All 
men  are  seeking  this  life  in  everything  they  do. 
They  cannot  stop  seeking  it,  any  more  than  they 
can  stop  breathing.  Just  think  for  a  moment,  and 
you  will  see  how  inevitable  this  is.  Every  one  of 
us  in  every  activity  of  our  waking  hours  is  engaged 
in  trying  to  increase  his  hold  upon  life,  trying  to 
expand  his  consciousness  of  life.  As  Tennyson 
has  it: 


l8o  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

Whatever  crazy  sorrow  saith, 

No  life  that  breathes  with  human  breath 

Has  ever  truly  longed  for  death. 

'Tis  life  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant; 
O  life,  not  death,  for  which  we  pant; 
More  Ufe,  and  fuller,  that  I  want. 

Whether  we  are  working  for  money  or  applause,  or 
for  some  impersonal  object,  we  are  all  the  time  seek- 
ing more  abundant  life,  and  the  more  successful 
we  are  in  getting  our  grasp  upon  life,  the  greater  is 
our  joy.  But  you  can  also  see  that  we  are  never 
able  to  pause  in  this  quest.  We  may  move  from 
one  object  to  another,  but  we  are  all  the  time  in  pur- 
suit of  the  infinite  reality.  Now,  what  is  this  infinite 
reality  but  God?  There  is  no  hfe  that  is  not  God. 
As  Augustine  has  put  it:  "Thou  hast  made  us  for 
Thyself,  and  our  hearts  are  restless  until  they  find 
rest  in  Thee."  Here,  again,  was  one  who  knew, 
for  he  had  tried  to  find  satisfaction  in  other  and  lesser 
ways;  Augustine  the  libertine  had  to  become  a 
Christian  before  he  found  what  he  had  been  blindly 
wanting  all  his  life. 

Let  me  tell  you  why  I  regard  this  point  as  of  so 
much  importance.  It  shows  that  no  man  can  really 
do  without  God.  It  fills  life  full  of  meaning.  Show 
men  what  they  really  want  in  their  feverish  rush  after 
wealth,  fame,  honour,  and  all  the  material  rewards 
of  this  world.  Tell  them  they  can  rest  in  nothing 
less  than  conscious  union  with  Him  who  is  the  source 


THE   MISTAKE   OF   SIN  l8l 

of  all  abiding  joy,  and  you  will  explain  to  them  their 
own  cravings.  Just  think  of  it !  In  all  the  drudgery 
of  to-morrow;  in  all  the  excitements  of  the  days 
beyond;  in  loss  and  disappointment;  in  the  splen- 
dour of  success;  in  our  quiet  domesticities;  in 
our  fierce  conflicts  with  the  world ;  in  all  the  ups  and 
downs  and  ins  and  outs  of  life  —  we  are  all  in  want 
of  the  same  thing,  the  only  reality  that  can  per- 
manently satisfy  the  soul,  and  the  strange  thing  is 
that  often  enough  we  do  not  know  it. 

Oh,  restless  hearts,  you  do  not  know  what  you 
want,  but  this  is  it.  "As  the  hart  panteth  after  the 
water  brooks,  so  panteth  my  soul  after  Thee,  O 
God." 

Now  here  is  the  melancholy  fact  concerning  sin: 
the  sinner  does  not  know  what  he  wants;  he  only 
thinks  he  knows.  When  he  seeks  a  gratification  in 
what  he  knows  to  be  wrong  it  is  like  drinking  salt 
water  to  quench  thirst.  There  is  a  voice  within  him 
which  tells  him  that  selfish  gratification  is  wrong, 
and  that  life  ought  not  to  be  sought  in  that  w^ay. 
He  silences  that  voice,  only  to  find  in  the  end  that 
the  joy  of  a  moment  has  been  purchased  at  a  heavy 
cost.  To  seek  hfe  selfishly  is  to  lose  it.  The  sinner 
always  knows  he  is  doing  wrong.  Wliat  he  does  not 
seem  to  know  is  that  the  end  of  that  wrong-doing 
is  the  loss  of  the  very  thing  he  tries  to  get :  he  grabs 
at  life  and  embraces  death.  Paul  knew  what  he  was 
saying  when  he  appealed  to  his  converts  to  observe 
the  fruits  of  a  sinful  life. 


1 82  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

I  can  imagine  that  among  my  congregation  at  this 
moment  there  is  some  poor  fellow  who  feels  that  this 
is  not  quite  an  accurate  description  of  his  experience. 
I  will  suppose  him  to  be  a  victim  of  the  drug  habit. 
Perhaps  he  knows  well  enough  that  this  habit  is 
ruining  him  body  and  soul,  and  causing  untold  sorrow 
to  other  people,  but  he  cannot  stop.  He  will  scheme 
and  lie  and  stoop  to  the  most  wicked  devices  in  order 
to  put  himself  in  the  power  of  his  enemy.  If  you 
ask  him  whether  he  knows  what  he  is  doing  he  will 
tell  you  he  knows  perfectly,  but  that  the  temporary 
gratification  is  worth  the  terrible  price.  He  will 
say  that  he  is  walking  into  hell  with  his  eyes  open 
because  it  feels  like  heaven  for  half  an  hour.  Now, 
I  do  not  wish  to  insist  too  strongly  upon  the  moral 
culpability  of  such  a  man  as  this,  but  moral  cul- 
pability there  must  have  been  somewhere  to  begin 
with :  he  sailed  his  boat  too  near  a  cataract,  and 
must  have  known  at  the  time  that  he  was  doing 
something  he  ought  not  to  do.  At  present  he  is 
only  a  helpless  derelict  swept  away  on  a  flood  he 
cannot  control:  we  know  well  enough,  and  so  does 
he,  where  that  flood  is  taking  him.  The  essence 
of  sin  is  self-gratification  at  the  cost  of  the  common 
good;  any  form  of  self-gratification  which  dimin- 
ishes your  value  to  mankind  is  sin.  Here  is  a  sin 
which  began  in  that  way :  now  it  is  hardly  a  sin  at 
all;  it  is  rather  the  terrible  harvest  which  is  being 
reaped  from  sin.  Would  any  one  need  to  ask 
whether  this  sin  was  a  soul's  mistake?    To  be  sure 


THE   MISTAKE    OF    SIN  1 83 

it  was.  If  this  poor  victim  of  his  own  folly  had 
known  what  the  end  would  be,  he  never  would  have 
entered  upon  this  course,  but  now  he  cannot  stop. 
He  needs  the  strong  hand  of  a  saviour,  and  I  fer- 
vently believe  that  he  can  have  it.  I  will  say  a  word 
about  this  presently  before  I  close,  but  I  do  not  wish 
for  the  moment  to  lose  sight  of  the  point  at  issue: 
every  sin  is  a  mistake.  Like  every  other  human 
activity,  it  is  a  quest  for  the  one  abiding  reality 
of  all  existence,  but  it  is  not  an  innocent  quest. 
It  is  a  quest  made  in  a  selfish  way ;  and  it  is  a  mis- 
take, because  the  sinner  has  to  find  out  in  the  long 
run  that  a  selfish  pursuit  of  life  only  ends  in 
death. 

Perhaps  the  example  just  given  is  not  the  best  that 
might  be  adduced,  but  it  is  sufficient  for  my  pur- 
pose. I  have  chosen  it  because  it  is  hardly  possible 
to  entertain  for  such  an  experience  any  other  feeling 
than  one  of  pity,  and  also  because  the  fell  result 
of  illicit  self  gratification  is  so  clear.  But  take  any 
other  sinful  deed  or  course  of  action,  and  you  will 
see  the  same  principle  at  work.  What  makes  a 
thing  wrong  ?  Is  there  any  conceivable  deed  which 
is  unchangeably  wrong  in  itself?  No,  there  is  not. 
"Sin  is  not  the  deed,"  as  JuHana  of  Norwich  used 
to  say.  It  is  the  desire  to  increase  one's  hold  on  life 
at  some  one  else's  cost  or  at  the  cost  of  the  common 
good.  A  sinner  may  not  be  consciously  disobeying 
God  when  he  does  a  selfish  thing ;  he  probably  is  not 
thinking  of  God  at  all,  and  yet  he  is  actually  trying 


184  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

to  appropriate  God's  own  life  by  snatching  it  from 
some  one  else.  Any  deed  becomes  sin  when  this 
is  the  motive.  The  very  same  deed  may  be  sin  in 
one  man  and  saviourhood  in  another.  In  the  Indian 
Mutiny,  for  instance,  a  small  party  of  Englishmen, 
sustained  by  the  courage  and  self-devotion  of  one 
good  woman,  held  out  for  many  hours  in  a  small 
house  against  a  murderous  horde  of  sepoys.  In  the 
end  they  were  overwhelmed  by  superior  numbers, 
and  just  before  the  last  frail  door  was  broken  down 
the  senior  officer  turned  to  the  brave  lady,  bowed 
low,  and  shot  her  through  the  heart.  He  did  pre- 
cisely what  the  enemy  meant  to  do,  though  no  doubt 
they  meant  to  do  it  more  cruelly.  What  would 
have  been  wickedness  on  their  part  was  kindness  on 
his.  No,  sin  is  not  the  deed;  it  is  the  motive  that 
inspires  the  deed.  And  that  motive  is  always  the 
same;  it  is  the  desire  to  get  more  abundant  life  by 
robbing  others.  The  sinner  may  not  put  it  this 
way  to  himself;  he  may  not  deliberately  say  so, 
but  then  he  does  it.  The  sinfulness  of  his  deed 
consists  in  the  fact  that  he  is  willing  to  gratify  him- 
self at  the  expense  of  others,  without,  perhaps, 
pausing  to  reflect  upon  the  matter  at  all.  He  does 
not  know  either  —  or  does  not  care  to  know  —  that 
the  life  he  craves  is  God's  own  life,  and  that  by  the 
law  of  God's  own  being  it  is  just  as  impossible  to 
get  and  keep  that  life  in  a  selfish  way  as  to  try  to 
preserve  a  flower  fresh  for  ever  by  tearing  it  out  of 
the  bed  where  it  grows.     The  end  of  such  an  action 


THE    MISTAKE    OF    SIN  185 

is  the  death  of  the  flower;  the  life  goes  back  to  the 
universe. 

It  should  now  be  plain  that  we  can  only  get  life 
by  giving  ourselves  to  it.  This  is  the  eternal  spiritual 
law  which  sin  tries  in  vain  to  violate.  If  you  want 
the  ocean,  plunge  into  it;  you  cannot  carry  it  away 
in  handfuls.  If  you  want  the  life  eternal  —  the 
life  that  underlies  all  phenomena,  the  life  you  love 
in  your  nearest  and  dearest,  the  life  which  is  God  — 
you  must  give  yourself  to  it  in  full  and  glad  surrender. 
Thus  the  path  of  love  is  the  path  of  life.  It  is  also 
the  path  of  wisdom,  whereas  sin  is  the  path  of  folly. 
In  the  long  run  it  is  the  path  of  light  and  joy,  whereas 
sin  is  the  path  of  darkness  and  pain.  Sin  and  love 
are  the  precise  opposites  of  each  other,  and  yet 
sinner  and  saint  are,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
seeking  for  exactly  the  same  thing.  They  both 
want  the  all-abundant  life. 

Will  you  allow  me,  in  closing,  to  be  very  direct  in 
my  appeal  to  those  who  hear  me  ?  I  want  you  to  see 
that  all  your  activities  come  under  one  or  other  of 
these  designations;  that  they  are  concerned  with 
the  same  eternal  reality,  and  that  according  to  the 
way  you  approach  that  reality  is  your  self-expres- 
sion failure  or  success.  Thus  sexual  love  is  man 
giving  himself  to  woman  to  cherish,  minister,  and 
protect.  In  so  doing  he  loses  himself  to  find  him- 
self in  larger  and  more  abundant  life.  Lust  is 
exactly  the  same  thing  working  in  the  opposite 
way,  tearing  away  from  womanhood  the  life  that 


1 86  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

seems  attractive,  destroying  instead  of  building 
up.  The  same  antithesis  is  everywhere  discernible. 
Whatever  is  not  love  is  sin.  Love  is  lifcwardness; 
sin  is  deathwardness.  How  do  our  lives  stand 
this  scrutiny?  Can  you  honestly  say  that  yours 
is  governed  by  the  love  motive?  If  not,  what  fruit 
do  you  suppose  you  will  have  as  harvests  come  and 
go?  Every  cruel  word  you  speak;  every  effort 
you  put  forth  to  increase  your  own  well-being, 
regardless  of  what  it  may  mean  to  another;  every 
hard,  grasping,  unscrupulous  use  you  make  of 
time  and  opportunity  will  tell  against  you  when 
the  reckoning  comes.  You  are  making  a  bad  mis- 
take —  the  mistake  of  all  self-seekers,  whether 
they  call  themselves  sinners  or  not.  Perhaps  you 
do  not  know  what  you  really  want  in  your  frantic 
efforts  to  get  this  and  that  which  you  hope  will 
increase  your  joys.  If  not,  I  will  tell  you:  you 
want  God.  That  is  why  you  ever  reach  forth  to 
anything  that  seems  to  you,  for  the  moment,  good. 
And  you  will  never  find  perfect  rest  in  anything 
less  than  communion  with  God.  Jesus  said  so, 
and  Jesus  knew.  Having  this,  you  have  all.  If 
you  have  been  living  a  life  of  sin,  you  are  unhappy; 
it  could  not  be  otherwise.  And,  remember,  the 
real  life  of  sin  is  just  the  life  of  self-seeking,  and 
that  may  be  lived  by  a  professing  Christian  with 
just  the  same  result.  He  is  unhappy;  he  does  not 
know  God ;  he  has  chosen  the  path  of  death.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  life  so  sunken  and 


THE    MISTAKE    OF    SIN  187 

degraded,  so  dark  and  sad,  but  that  the  light  of 
God  will  break  over  it  and  the  life  of  God  will  pour 
into  it  as  soon  as  the  self  is  laid  upon  the  altar  of 
Christ-like  love.  I  speak  what  I  know,  and  testify 
what  I  have  seen,  when  I  say  that  there  is  no  evil 
habit  which  cannot  be  broken  when  the  power  of 
Divine  love  is  sincerely  invoked.  I  will  acknowledge 
no  exception.  I  do  not  care  what  you  may  have 
been  or  what  you  are,  the  claim  of  simple  faith 
upon  the  love  of  God  never  goes  unhonoured.  It 
is  as  much  a  spiritual  law  as  the  law  that  the  wages 
of  sin  is  the  death  of  the  good  the  sinner  thought 
to  get.  Almighty  God,  the  Father  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  desireth  not  the  death  of  a  sinner, 
but  rather  that  he  should  turn  from  his  wickedness 
and  live.  Believe  it:  claim  the  promise,  and  enter 
into  life. 


LOVE   DESTROYING   AND   RESTORING 

"  Thou  turnest  man  to  destruction ;  and  sayest, 
Return,  ye  children  of  men."  —  Ps.  xc.  3. 

This  text  has  been  burdening  my  mind  for  some 
time,  because  I  could  not  see  what  it  meant.  I  know 
now.  It  would  perhaps  be  a  useful  exercise  for 
some  of  you  to  put  the  question  to  yourselves  at  this 
moment  before  we  proceed  any  farther  with  our 
examination  of  the  passage.  What  do  you  think 
this  statement  means?  In  its  English  dress  it  is 
certainly  somewhat  obscure,  and  yet  in  the  Revised 
Version  of  the  Old  Testament  it  has  been  allowed 
to  stand.  I  think  I  can  see  the  reason  for  this.  It 
is  because  of  the  dual  meaning  of  the  word  destruc- 
tion, and  upon  the  interpretation  of  that  word  the 
whole  sentence  turns.  It  is  a  word  which  may  be 
rendered  "destruction,"  "dissolution,"  or  "dust." 
By  analogy  it  has  a  further  meaning  in  the  sphere 
of  ethics  and  religion,  as  we  shall  see  presently. 
The  literal  meaning  of  the  text  therefore  is,  "Thou 
sendest  man  to  the  grave  [or  to  the  dust],  and  sayest. 
Return,  ye  children  of  men,  to  the  earth  whence 
ye  were  taken."  It  is  thus  an  echo  of  the  curse 
pronounced  upon  Adam  in  the  third  chapter  of 
the  Book  of  Genesis:    "Dust  thou  art,  and  unto 

188 


LOVE   DESTROYING   AND   RESTORING  1 89 

dust  shalt  thou  return."  There  is  nothing  very 
inspiring  about  this  declaration,  and  yet  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  it  was  present  to  the  poet's  mind. 
There  is  not  much  in  the  Old  Testament  to  en- 
courage belief  in  personal  immortality.  On  the 
face  of  it,  therefore,  we  have  here  a  reminder  of  the 
brevity  of  human  life  as  contrasted  with  the  eternal 
greatness  of  God.  The  sentiment  is  the  same  as 
that  of  the  fine  passage  in  the  hundred  and  third 
Psalm:  "Like  as  a  father  pitieth  his  children,  so 
the  Lord  pitieth  them  that  fear  Him.  For  He 
knoweth  our  frame;  He  remembereth  that  we  are 
dust.  As  for  man,  his  days  are  as  grass :  as  a  flower 
of  the  field,  so  he  flourisheth.  For  the  wind  passeth 
over  it,  and  it  is  gone;  and  the  place  thereof  shall 
know  it  no  more.  But  the  mercy  of  the  Lord  is 
from  everlasting  to  everlasting  upon  them  that 
fear  Him,  and  His  righteousness  unto  children's 
children." 

This,  I  say,  is  all  we  are  justified  in  assuming 
as  to  the  literal  meaning  of  our  text.  The  Jew  of 
Old  Testament  times  did  not  greatly  concern  him- 
self with  the  survival  of  individual  existence  beyond 
the  grave.  The  only  immortality  with  which  he 
had  much  concern  was  that  of  the  nation,  and  that 
was  an  immortality  entirely  of  this  world:  Israel 
was  God's  child,  whose  existence  was  guaranteed 
from  generation  to  generation  in  accordance  with 
the  Divine  promise.  The  thought  of  the  value  of 
personality,  as  we  know  it  now,  was  a  very  gradual 


190  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

growth;  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  just  in 
proportion  as  the  worth  of  the  individual  and  the 
reality  of  individual  moral  freedom  began  to  come 
into  prominence,  belief  in  personal  immortality 
began  to  grow  too.  But  this  belief  never  attained 
any  very  great  proportions.  Even  up  to  the  time 
when  Jesus  was  born  the  notion  of  a  life  beyond 
the  grave  was  very  hazy,  even  where  it  was  held  at 
all. 

But  there  is  a  further  meaning  attaching  to  the 
words  of  our  text,  a  meaning  which  has  little  or 
nothing  to  do  with  the  question  of  immortality, 
and  the  literal  meaning  is  only  to  be  understood  as 
a  figure  wherewith  to  illustrate  a  moral  truth.  I  am 
sure  you  will  agree  with  me  that  this  moral  truth  is 
what  was  really  present  to  the  writer's  mind  when 
I  tell  you  what  it  is.  I  have  already  said  that  the 
thought  of  the  text  turns  upon  the  interpretation  we 
give  to  the  word  rendered  "destruction."  Now 
here  is  a  very  interesting  point.  This  word  is  else- 
where rendered  "contrition."  As  such  it  appears 
in  various  forms  in  some  of  the  most  familiar  pas- 
sages in  the  Psalms  and  the  Book  of  Isaiah.  Take, 
for  example,  Psalm  xxxiv.  verse  18:  "The  Lord  is 
nigh  unto  them  that  are  of  a  broken  heart;  and 
saveth  such  as  be  of  a  contrite  spirit."  Or  take  the 
fifty-first  Psalm,  verse  17:  "The  sacrifices  of  God 
are  a  broken  spirit;  a  broken  and  a  contrite  heart, 
O  God,  Thou  wilt  not  despise."  In  both  of  these 
beautiful  devotional  utterances  the  word  used  for 


LOVE    DESTROYING    AND   RESTORING  19I 

"contrite"  is  that  which  in  our  text  is  rendered 
"destruction."  Now  turn  to  the  Book  of  Isaiah, 
and  you  will  find  the  same  root  word  employed  to 
express  the  same  spiritual  idea.  Take  the  fifteenth 
verse  of  the  fifty-seventh  chapter:  "For  thus  saith 
the  high  and  lofty  One  that  inhabiteth  eternity, 
whose  name  is  Holy:  I  dwell  in  the  high  and  holy 
place,  with  him  also  that  is  of  a  contrite  and  humble 
spirit,  to  revive  the  spirit  of  the  humble  and  to  re- 
vive the  heart  of  the  contrite  ones." 

This  use  of  the  word  destruction  to  express  con- 
trition supplies  the  key  to  my  text.  I  can  see  now 
quite  plainly  what  the  Psalmist  means.  He  does 
mean,  of  course,  that  death  is  the  appointed  lot  of 
all  men: 

Art  is  long,  and  time  is  fleeting; 

And  our  hearts,  though  stout  and  brave. 
Still  like  muffled  drums  are  beating 

Funeral  marches  to  the  grave. 

But  where  would  be  the  good  of  saying  only  this? 
Especially  where  would  be  the  good  of  telling  this 
to  God?  God  does  not  need  the  information.  But 
the  whole  subject  takes  on  a  higher  meaning  the 
moment  we  realise  that  this  sentence  is  an  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  gracious  dealings  of  God  with  the 
human  soul.  He  is  the  source  of  all  contrition  — 
that  is.  He  humbles  into  the  dust  our  pride  and  self- 
will.  God  is  always  saying  to  the  wanderers,  "Re- 
turn, ye  children  of  men."  Destruction  waits  upon 
all  our  efforts  after  self-aggrandisement.     Our  ridic- 


192  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

ulous  little  pomp  and  pretence,  our  love  of  recog- 
nition from  our  fellows,  our  desire  to  domineer  over 
one  another  —  must  all  be  brought  low.  This  is 
the  tone  and  spirit  of  this  whole  Psalm.  The  sense 
of  shortcoming  is  exceptionally  great;  the  writer 
is  all  the  time  humbling  himself  before  the  Almighty, 
and  entering  sweetly  into  the  recognition  that  the 
soul  belongs  to  God  and  has  no  other  home :  "  Thou 
has  set  our  iniquities  before  Thee,  our  secret  sins  in 
the  light  of  Thy  countenance.  .  .  .  O  satisfy  us 
early  with  Thy  mercy;  that  we  may  rejoice  and  be 
glad  all  our  days.  Make  us  glad  according  to  the 
days  wherein  Thou  hast  afflicted  us,  and  the  years 
wherein  we  have  seen  evil.  Let  Thy  work  appear 
unto  Thy  servants,  and  Thy  glory  unto  their  children. 
And  let  the  beauty  of  the  Lord  our  God  be  upon 
us."  I  think  you  will  all  agree  that  this  is  what 
the  writer  intends  to  declare.  Just  as  death  resolves 
the  human  body  into  dust,  so  will  the  righteousness 
of  God  humble  our  self-love  that  He  may  draw  us 
back  to  Himself.  The  spiritual  truth  thus  declared 
is  exceedingly  beautiful  and  helpful,  and  we  cannot 
do  better  than  dwell  upon  it  for  a  little  while  longer. 
How  does  God  do  all  this?  God  comes  to  the 
rescue  of  mankind  in  and  through  mankind.  There 
is  something  here  which  the  Psalmist  saw  in  prin- 
ciple, but  which  until  Jesus  came  the  world  had  never 
seen  in  full  expression.  We  cannot  now  look  at  a 
statement  of  this  kind  without  seeing  it  in  the  light 
which  the   Gospel  of  Jesus  throws  upon  it.     On 


LOVE   DESTROYING   AND   RESTORING  1 93 

Thursday  morning  last  I  made  a  statement  in  the 
course  of  my  sermon  which  needed  expansion,  and 
to  which  I  promised  to  return  at  some  future  time. 
As  far  as  I  can  remember,  it  was  something  like  this. 
The  love  of  Christ  is  such  that  in  the  presence  of 
sin  it  will  willingly  accept  the  Cross,  and  go  on  accept- 
ing it,  until  there  is  nothing  left  but  love.  Now  this 
is  a  very  far-reaching  statement,  with  enormous 
implications,  and  I  want  you  to  realise  it  for  what 
it  is.  By  the  love  of  Christ,  of  course,  I  mean  the 
Divine  passion  expressed  in  the  life  and  death  of 
Jesus.  I  mean  the  love  of  God  in  man.  I  believe 
that  that  Divine  passion  is  at  work  in  the  world 
to-day,  and  that  it  is  the  redeeming  force  against 
which  in  the  long  run  no  sin  or  suffering  can  stand. 
It  centres  in  Jesus,  and  is  set  in  motion  by  faith  in 
Jesus,  but  I  recognise  it  wherever  self-sacrifice  is 
turning  pride  and  self-will  to  destruction  and  lifting 
mankind  back  to  God. 

No  imagery  can  rise  too  high  above  the  dream  of  life, 

No  love-ideal  soars  too  high  above  the  vale  of  strife; 

No  effort  of  the  loving  heart  can  be  too  highly  priced, 

No  sacrifice  can  rise  above  the  sacrifice  of  Christ. 

Go;  be  a  Christ,  and  in  thy  state  of  Christhood  thou  shalt 

know 
All  man  can  give  to  man  to-day  was  given  long  ago. 

Christ-love  is  God's  righteous  love  revealed  in 
man.  Now,  there  are  various  things  which  this 
love  can  teach  us  when  we  really  get  to  understand 
the  nature  of  it.     The  first  is  that  there  is  no  such 


194  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

thing  as  individualism  cither  in  suffering  or  salvation. 
At  a  certain  stage  of  spiritual  experience  we  are 
prone  to  think  a  good  deal  of  pains  and  penalties 
on  account  of  wrong-doing,  and  it  is  right  that  we 
should.  These  pains  and  penalties  are  the  outcome 
of  what  the  Bible  metaphorically  calls  the  wrath  of 
God.  But  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  wrath 
of  God,  if  by  that  expression  we  mean  that  God 
gets  angry  and  cherishes  thoughts  of  vengeance  as 
we  mortals  do;  God  is  consistently  and  unchang- 
ingly love,  never  hate.  But  love  pursuing  sin  may 
—  indeed  must  —  inflict  pain  upon  the  sinner; 
there  is  no  help  for  it.  The  heat  of  the  summer 
sun,  the  life-giver  of  the  earth,  may  turn  to  light- 
ning when  its  operations  are  hindered  by  adverse 
conditions.  Just  so  it  is  in  the  dealings  of  God 
with  man.  Love  is  always  love  and  nothing  else, 
but  love  will  not  hesitate  to  destroy  that  which  is 
false  and  unworthy  in  human  experience.  It  will 
strip  off  all  the  encrustations  of  our  self-delusions, 
that  it  may  lay  bare  the  soul.  It  turns  to  destruction 
that  it  may  save.  "The  fire  shall  try  every  man's 
work  of  what  sort  it  is,"  and  nothing  evil  can  endure 
in  the  all-devouring  flame  of  the  retributive  love  of 
God.  I  hope  you  will  all  admit  this  before  we  go  any 
farther.  If  we  could  get  all  men  to  see  that  life  is 
so  organised  that  the  love  of  God  will  make  hell 
as  well  as  heaven,  the  gain  to  true  religion  would 
be  vast  indeed.  It  is  not  now  and  then,  but  always, 
that  the  love  of  God  works  for  the  destruction  of 


LOVE    DESTROYING    AND    RESTORING  1 95 

every  dark  and  sinister  product  of  human  selfish- 
ness. If  you  sin  you  must  suffer;  that  is  the  law  of 
the  spiritual  universe,  the  law  of  love.  Sometimes 
it  must  seem  as  though  it  were  not  so,  but  the  uni- 
verse is  wide,  and  what  we  know  of  it  now  is  but 
a  small  corner  of  the  great  reality.  He  with  whom 
"a  thousand  years  are  but  as  yesterday  when  it  is 
past"  has  plenty  of  scope  for  the  operation  of  His 
purpose  in  the  case  of  every  single  soul.  Let  me 
repeat  that  anywhere  and  everywhere  in  the  vast 
universe  of  God  love  is  the  destruction  of  everything 
that  is  not  itself. 

But  there  is  nothing  atomistic  about  all  this.  The 
very  same  love  which  the  sinner  feels  as  the  wrath 
of  God  is  the  love  which  suffers  for  him  as  well  as  in 
him.  I  notice  that  the  one  thing  in  the  Christian 
Gospel  which  people  feel  to  be  most  precious,  and 
which  they  are  least  willing  to  see  assailed,  is  the 
truth  that  Jesus  bore  their  sins  upon  the  Cross. 
They  feel  the  truth  of  this  even  though  they  cannot 
defend  it,  and  they  are  perfectly  right;  it  is  the 
marrow  of  the  evangel  of  the  Cross.  Without  this 
truth  it  would  not  be  worth  while  to  preach  Chris- 
tianity at  all;  it  is  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation. 
It  is  an  impressive  thing  to  recognise  that  the  hu- 
man heart  has  instinctively  perceived  the  redemptive 
value  of  this  truth  even  under  the  most  repellent 
forms  of  statement.  But  what  I  now  wish  you  to  see 
is  the  fact  that  the  range  of  this  truth  is  much  wider 
than  is  generally  supposed.     Love  divine  is  such  that 


196  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

it  can  recognise  no  self  but  the  whole.  It  will  keep 
on  bearing  the  penalty  of  sin,  no  matter  whose  the 
sin  may  be,  until  sin  is  no  more  and  there  is  nothing 
left  but  love.  Picture  the  matter  to  yourself  in  this 
way.  Try  to  imagine  that  the  being  you  love  most 
in  all  the  world  has  been  guilty  of  the  folly  of  some 
action  which  has  meant  utter  ruin  to  him  or  her. 
It  may  be  your  own  child.  What  would  you  do 
in  such  a  case?  Can  you  imagine  any  penalty 
you  would  not  be  willing  to  bear  if  the  object  of 
your  love  could  be  saved  thereby?  Would  the 
sufferer  have  any  suffering  that  would  not  be  yours 
too?  Could  he  or  she  feel  the  awfulness  of  the 
situation  more  than  you  ?  In  fact,  if  it  were  humanly 
possible,  would  you  not  willingly  take  the  whole 
burden  of  responsibility  upon  yourself?  And  even 
now  your  self-identiiication  with  the  pain  and  loss 
and  sorrow  of  the  situation  is  so  complete  that  it 
could  no  farther  go.  I  have  little  doubt  that  I  am 
speaking  to  some  one  who  knows  quite  well  what 
it  means  to  feel  like  this,  for  you  have  been  through 
it.  Very  likely  there  is  some  one  here  who  is 
sharing  a  sinner's  hell  and  feeling  it  more  than  the 
sinner  himself.  Well,  understand  that  you  have 
entered  right  into  the  very  heart  of  the  mysterious 
truth  expressed  on  Calvary,  the  passion  of  God  for 
men.  The  nearer  you  rise  towards  the  heart  of  the 
all-Father  the  greater  will  this  passion  become.  We 
can  dimly  realise,  therefore,  how  Jesus  must  have 
felt  towards  mankind.     It  was  as  though  the  sinner 


LOVE    DESTROYING    AND    RESTORING  I97 

were  Himself;  nay,  more  than  that,  as  though  He 
had  no  self  except  the  sinner.  Sin  itself  is  nothing 
but  a  denial  of  the  love  of  God ;  it  never  is  anything 
else.  Sin  is  just  that  in  human  experience  which  is 
not  love,  and  love  must  suffer  to  destroy  it.  Or 
we  will  put  it  another  way:  Sin  is  the  attempt  to 
build  a  wall  of  separation  around  the  soul,  and  love 
is  the  life  eternal  shattering  the  barriers  and  forcing 
its  way  in,  that  the  imprisoned  soul  may  find  liberty. 
Sin  always  has  its  root  in  ignorance;  it  is  the  soul 
foolishly  trying  to  live  by  what  is  finite  instead  of  by 
what  is  infinite,  and  this  is  what  love  can  never 
permit.  And  so  the  mighty  process  goes  on,  and 
so  it  will  go  on  until  the  final  victory  is  won  and 
a  redeemed  humanity  is  gathered  home  to  God. 
There  is  no  hell  which  love  will  not  share,  no  cross 
it  will  not  carry,  no  penalty  of  sin  which  it  does  not 
feel  as  its  own.  I  am  at  a  loss  for  language  where- 
with to  state  this  truth  as  strongly  as  I  feel  it.  But 
perhaps  it  may  be  put  into  a  single  sentence:  there 
is  no  such  thing  in  the  wide  universe  of  God  as  a 
lonely  hell,  although  the  sinner  may  feel  it  to  be  such. 
The  love  of  God  is  always  there:  it  is  that  which 
makes  hell,  and  in  itself  it  is  heaven. 

But,  some  one  may  remark,  this  is  not  just.  You 
have  practically  told  us  that  the  righteous  must 
suffer  on  account  of  the  guilty,  and  must  go  on  doing 
so  while  any  guilt  remains.  But  this  is  unfair.  If 
I  have  lived  an  upright  life,  I  am  entitled  to  the 
reward  thereof;   and  if  my  neighbour  has  not  done 


198  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

SO,  he  ought  to  reap  what  he  has  sown:  what  have 
I  to  do  with  his  harvest  of  pain?  I  can  soon  tell 
you.  Your  own  harvest  of  joy  will  be  incomplete 
while  it  is  possible  to  ask  such  a  question.  You  can- 
not disentangle  destinies  in  that  way.  Ask  yourself 
what  is  noblest  and  divinest  in  human  life  to-day. 
Is  it  not  the  impulse  to  place  one's  whole  conscious- 
ness of  self  upon  the  altar  of  redeeming  love?  Is 
not  the  Christ  man  the  man  who  refuses  to  be  content 
while  want,  and  misery,  and  ignorance  work  their 
sad  results  in  the  shadowing  of  human  life  and  the 
lessening  of  human  joy?  Can  you  conceive  any- 
thing higher  than  to  be  able  to  say,  "That  loss  is 
my  loss ;  that  pain  is  my  pain ;  that  life  is  my  life  — 
I  cannot  come  into  possession  of  my  own  until  that 
is  redeemed"?  I  am  sure  you  would  feel  like  this. 
Nothing  less  than  this  is  a  real  participation  in  the 
love  of  Christ  that  passeth  knowledge.  But  apply  it 
to  sin  too.  You  ought  to  do  so;  you  must  do  so. 
Every  sinner  is  a  patient  in  the  hospital  of  God; 
he  needs  pity,  for  he  does  not  know  how  ill  he  is. 
"They  that  be  whole  need  not  a  physician,  but 
they  that  are  sick."  They  that  deserve  the  least 
require  the  most,  God  feels  towards  every  erring 
child  of  His  just  as  you  feel  towards  the  child  that 
needs  the  most  from  you.  It  sometimes  happens 
that  in  a  family  circle  there  is  one  child  which  is  a 
little  more  trying  than  the  rest,  a  little  less  attractive, 
unlovely  in  disposition,  peevish  or  sullen,  or  perhaps 
with  a  tendency  to  darker  vices.     As  a  rule  you  will 


LOVE    DESTROYING    AND    RESTORING  1 99 

find  that  this  is  the  child  over  which  the  mother's 
heart  yearns  most  tenderly.  She  sees  possibilities 
that  others  do  not  see,  and  she  knows  enough  of  the 
inner  history  of  that  poor  little  soul  to  enable  her 
to  be  patient  with  the  slowness  of  its  growth.  She 
never  takes  the  trouble  to  balance  merit  and  demerit 
in  the  scales  of  justice ;  she  only  knows  that  a  child 
which  is  morally  sick  needs  her,  and  she  gives  her- 
self ungrudgingly.  That  is  just  the  way  with  God, 
and  the  more  we  ponder  the  matter  the  more  glorious 
seems  the  truth  about  redeeming  love.  Talk  about 
justice !  There  is  no  justice  but  love.  God  suffers 
in  the  sinner  when  love  brings  the  fabric  of  the 
sinner's  selfish  hopes  and  aims  to  destruction.  But 
all  the  Christlike  love  in  the  universe  accepts  that 
suffering  too,  and  rejoices  to  do  so.  It  cannot  help 
itself:  by  its  very  nature  love  must  suffer  while 
sin  remains.  This  is  its  high  prerogative,  its  priestly 
glory.  In  all  the  Christlike  love  which  is  at  work 
in  the  hearts  of  men  to-day  God  becomes  incarnate 
for  the  redemption  of  the  world,  crying,  "Return, 
ye  children  of  men!" 

Take  this  truth  home  to  your  inmost  souls.  If 
you  have  any  one  belonging  to  you  who  is  causing 
you  pain,  thank  God  for  being  allowed  to  bear  it, 
for  by  so  doing  you  have  entered  into  the  fellowship 
of  that  suffering  of  Christ  which  by  and  by  shall 
ripen  into  highest  joy.  Are  you  bearing  some  one 
else's  burden,  agonising  for  some  one  else's  fault? 
Do  not  fret  or  murmur,  and  do  not  try  to  escape  the 


200  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

experience.  Never  wish  it  otherwise  until  the  thing 
that  has  caused  this  burden-bearing  is  at  an  end  for 
evermore.  Are  you  bound  by  the  cords  of  love  to 
some  one  who  seems  utterly  unworthy  of  the  holy 
sacrifice,  and  who  at  this  present  hour  has  chosen 
hell  on  earth  instead  of  heaven  ?  Then  go  into  hell 
with  him,  for  in  this  sacrament  of  love  you  have 
become  his  very  self.  It  is  not  fair!  I  laugh  at 
the  word.  It  is  something  a  thousand  times  better 
than  that.  It  is  God's  redeeming  passion  manifest 
in  you  for  the  utter  destruction  of  all  that  would 
hinder  two  from  becoming  one.  The  one  thing 
that  can  break  a  sinner's  heart  is  the  love  that  will 
not  let  him  go.  Let  him  see  love  accepting  his  dis- 
abilities and  sharing  his  cross,  and  you  have  done 
for  him  what  loveless  retribution  (if  such  a  thing 
were  possible)  could  never  do.  Together  we  suffer; 
together  we  rise.  The  sure  and  certain  mark  that 
a  soul  has  attained  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the 
fullness  of  Christ  is  its  willingness  to  identify  itself 
with  the  lot  of  the  sinner.  No  sooner  has  it  gained 
the  highest  heights  than  it  plunges  to  the  lowest 
depths,  that  it  may  accept  the  portion  of  the  guilty 
and  set  the  sinner  free.  It  should  make  you  happier 
and  stronger  to  know  this.  "He  that  hath  ears  to 
hear,  let  him  hear."  This  is  the  way  in  which  God 
is  reconciling  the  world  unto  Himself.  You  need 
ask  no  greater  privilege,  you  need  seek  no  higher 
joy.  Far,  far  beyond  the  thought  of  a  bliss  that 
leaves  a  darkened  soul  outside  its  heaven  is  the 


LOVE    DESTROYING    AND    RESTORING  20I 

knowledge  of  a  love  that  says,  "Let  me  take  the 
place  of  that  suffering  one;  let  me  bear  all  he  has 
deserved;  let  me  enter  his  darkness  and  his  pain, 
that  he  may  come  to  life  and  light."  Some  of  you 
already  know  a  little  of  what  this  means,  for  there 
may  be  just  one  soul  in  existence  for  whom  you 
would  be  willing  to  do  it  all.  Understand  then  that 
this  is  the  last  word  of  the  eternal  righteousness; 
this  is  the  truth  without  which  heaven  could  not 
be.  You  are  on  holy  ground,  and  the  radiance  of  the 
eternal  glory  is  already  shining  through  you.  "The 
path  of  the  just  is  as  the  light  of  the  dawn  which 
shineth  more  and  more  unto  the  perfect  day." 


THE    TURNING    FROM    INIQUITY 

"  Unto  you  first  God,  having  raised  up  His  Son 
Jesus,  sent  Him  to  bless  you,  in  turning  away 
every  one  of  you  from  his  iniquities."  —  Acts 
iii.  26. 

This  passage  forms  the  conclusion  of  Peter's 
address  to  the  populace  gathered  at  Solomon's 
Porch  after  the  healing  of  the  lame  man  at  the 
Beautiful  Gate  of  the  Temple.  It  was  not  a  long 
discourse,  but  it  contains  some  remarkable  things, 
our  text  being  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  of  all. 
Before  going  on  to  try  to  interpret  its  message,  it 
may  be  well  to  consider  briefly  and  in  detail  the 
allusions  made  and  the  terms  employed  both  in  the 
sentence  itself  and  the  immediate  context. 

The  opening  phrase  is  not  without  significance  — 
"Unto  you  first."  The  apostle  is  here  represented 
as  telling  his  Jewish  audience  that  the  message  of 
Christianity  was  intended  primarily  for  them.  This 
statement  can  be  readily  understood  when  we  re- 
member what  that  message  was  supposed  to  imply; 
you  will  find  more  than  one  allusion  to  it  in  the 
verses  preceding,  and  I  ask  you  to  notice  that  in 
emphasis  it  was  quite  different  from  what  a  modern 
preacher  would  say,  or  expect  his  hearers  to  believe. 
We  must  remember  that  these  Jews  were  looking 


THE   TURNING    FROM    INIQUITY  203 

for  a  sudden  and  forceful  winding  up  of  the  world's 
affairs.  They  were  not  anticipating  an  actual  end 
of  the  world  so  much  as  a  fresh  and  more  hopeful 
beginning.  They  thought  that  God  would  inter- 
fere by  means  of  a  supernaturally  gifted  representa- 
tive called  the  Messiah,  and  would  break  the  Roman 
yoke  from  off  the  necks  of  the  chosen  people.  Then, 
they  thought,  a  long  period  of  happiness  and  pros- 
perity would  begin,  not  only  for  the  Jews  but  for 
all  the  nations  of  the  earth.  I  am  not  sure  that  this 
latter  part  of  the  blessing  was  universally  believed 
in ;  on  the  contrary,  some  of  the  Jews  loved  to  dwell 
upon  the  thought  that  the  Gentiles  would  be  outside 
the  scope  of  this  promise.  But  here  in  Peter's 
discourse  it  is  stated  as  plainly  as  possible:  "Ye  are 
the  children  of  the  prophets,  and  of  the  covenant 
which  God  made  with  our  fathers,  saying  unto 
Abraham,  In  thy  seed  shall  all  the  kindreds  of  the 
earth  be  blessed." 

The  next  thing  to  notice  is  that  the  little  group  of 
Christians  of  whom  Peter  was  the  spokesman  be- 
lieved that  the  Messiah  who  should  bring  all  this 
about  was  Jesus.  They  believed  that  the  crucifix- 
ion had  done  no  harm,  so  far  as  this  hope  was  con- 
cerned, beyond  the  fact  that  it  had  filled  up  the  cup 
of  the  world's  iniquity.  Thus  Peter  says  to  his 
hearers,  "Ye  denied  the  Holy  One  and  the  Just, 
and  killed  the  Prince  of  life."  Peter  and  his  fol- 
lowers believed  that  Jesus  would  come  again  very 
soon,  with  great  power  and  glory,  to  inaugurate  this 


204  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

reign  of  God  for  which  all  devout  men  were  look- 
ing. I  wish  you  to  notice  that  the  Jews  and  Chris- 
tians of  this  time  were  looking  for  exactly  the  same 
thing,  only  that  the  Jews  did  not  believe  that  Jesus 
would  be  the  means  of  bringing  it  about,  whereas 
the  Christians  maintained  that  He  would. 

There  is  one  other  point  of  some  consequence 
implied  in  the  wording  of  the  text.  It  is  this:  Our 
Authorised  Version  says,  "God  having  raised  up 
His  Son  Jesus,  sent  Him  to  bless  you."  But  the 
Revised  Version  simply  says,  "  God  having  raised  up 
His  servant."  It  may  seem  to  you  that  this  altera- 
tion lessens  the  force  of  the  saying,  and  that  "ser- 
vant" is  not  as  good  a  word  as  "Son"  to  express  the 
spiritual  dignity  of  Jesus.  If  you  think  this,  how- 
ever, let  me  assure  you  that  you  are  quite  mistaken. 
This  is  another  of  the  allusions  made  in  the  text  to 
ideas  with  which  we  are  not  familiar  now,  but  which 
were  of  great  significance  to  Peter's  audience.  This 
is  a  reference  to  that  great  ideal  set  forth  in  the 
pages  of  the  second  Isaiah  —  the  suffering  servant 
of  God.  Take,  for  example,  Isaiah  xlii.  i:  "Behold 
My  servant,  whom  I  uphold;  Mine  elect,  in  whom 
My  soul  delighteth;  I  have  put  My  spirit  upon 
him:  he  shall  bring  forth  judgment  to  the  Gentiles." 
Now,  the  really  striking  thing  about  Peter's  use  of 
these  words  is  the  fact  that  he  identifies  the  suffer- 
ing servant  of  God  with  the  Messiah,  a  thing  the 
Jews  did  not  wish  to  do.  The  Jews  always  thought 
of  the  Messiah  as  a  mighty  conqueror,  a  glorious 


THE   TURNING   FROM   INIQUITY  205 

deliverer.  The  last  thing  they  ever  imagined  was 
that  their  Messiah  could  possibly  be  crucified  as  a 
common  criminal.  And  yet  that  is  just  what  Peter 
is  now  telling  them.  He  tells  them  that  the  long- 
awaited  Messiah  had  come  to  earth  as  the  suffering 
servant  of  God;  had  lived  in  their  midst  as  a  poor 
man;  had  done  His  best  by  means  of  the  word  of 
love  and  truth  to  turn  them  away  from  their  iniq- 
uities; and  that  in  the  end  they  had  committed  the 
dreadful  deed  of  putting  Him  to  death  with  ignominy. 
The  point  of  his  exhortation  now  is  that  they  should 
repent  of  having  done  this,  and  should  turn  with 
all  their  hearts  towards  Him  whom  they  had  thus 
wickedly  rejected.  If  not,  said  Peter,  they  would 
be  left  as  completely  outside  the  kingdom  of  God 
when  it  came  as  the  most  wicked  of  the  Gentiles 
would  be. 

It  is  always  extremely  interesting  to  me  to  get  at 
the  bottom  of  the  ideas  which  are  taken  for  granted 
in  such  a  passage  as  this,  and  I  trust  therefore  that 
the  brief  examination  we  have  just  made  will  not 
be  altogether  unprofitable.  It  shows  us,  at  any 
rate,  that  the  people  who  first  heard  my  text  spoken 
or  read  looked  upon  life  rather  differently  from 
what  you  and  I  do.  We  are  not  expecting  a  sudden 
winding  up  of  human  affairs  and  the  making  of  a 
fresh  start;  neither  are  most  of  us  looking  for  a 
dramatic  second  coming  of  Christ.  Some  of  us 
may,  but  our  expectation  is  not  so  intense  as  that 
of  these  first  Christians.     But  there  is  one  thing  in 


2o6  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

which  we  take  exactly  the  same  ground  as  the  Apostle 
Peter  and  his  friends:  Like  them,  we  know  from 
experience  that  the  power  of  the  Spirit  of  Jesus 
does  continue  to  bless  the  world  in  turning  men  away 
from  their  iniquities.  Let  me  try  to  show  you  what 
I  think  this  means. 

To  begin  with,  I  may  as  well  say  plainly  that  there 
is  no  subject  upon  which  Christian  thought  needs 
to  be  more  clearly  readjusted  at  the  present  day 
than  the  subject  of  sin.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  the  thought  of  sin  has  lain  like  a  nightmare 
upon  the  Christian  consciousness  for  many  centuries, 
and  it  is  time  we  got  rid  of  it.  It  has  surprised  me 
greatly  to  observe  the  slowness  and  timidity  with 
which  many,  even  among  liberal  religious  thinkers, 
give  up  the  sombre  views  of  the  theologians  of  the 
past  on  this  one  subject.  They  seem  afraid  of 
being  accused  of  trifling  with  the  moral  sense  if 
they  obey  their  own  higher  instinct  when  consider- 
ing the  responsibility  of  man  to  God.  We  are 
constantly  being  told  that  if  we  say  this,  or  if  we 
do  that,  men  will  break  free  from  all  moral  restraints 
and  plunge  into  the  pleasures  of  self-indulgence. 
Never  was  there  a  greater  delusion.  I  do  not  deny 
that  the  appeal  to  fear  has  occasionally  produced 
salutary  results,  but,  at  the  best,  fear  is  a  poor  motive 
for  doing  right,  and  altogether  inferior  in  effect  to 
the  power  of  love. 

Now,  just  look  at  this  question  for  a  moment, 
first  in  the  light  of  theological  tradition,  and  then 


THE   TURNING    FROM    INIQUITY  207 

in  that  of  spiritually  minded  common  sense.  For 
ages  the  theologian  has  been  telling  us,  and  the 
average  Christian  professes  to  believe,  that  sin  is 
some  vague,  terrible,  bafBing  force  which  has  divided 
man  from  God  and  made  it  inevitable  that  God 
should  take  some  sort  of  vengeance  upon  him. 
The  situation  has  been  painted  in  the  most  sombre 
colours.  Preachers  nov^^adays  hesitate  to  say  straight 
out  as  much  as  their  doctrines  imply,  for  they  have 
a  misgiving,  not  only  as  to  their  validity,  but  even  as 
to  their  moral  reasonableness.  It  was  not  so  v/ith 
their  predecessors,  however.  Why  do  we  so  com- 
monly fail  to  realise  that  the  horrible  implications 
of  the  conventional  doctrine  of  sin  do  not  belong  to 
Christianity  at  all,  but  to  the  inhuman  theologisings 
of  centuries  later  ?  —  and  a  sinister  inheritance  they 
are.  Thus,  whether  we  say  it  plainly  or  not,  the 
ordinary  doctrine  of  sin  implies  an  angry  God,  a 
fallen  race,  a  distant  judgment  day,  and  a  hope- 
less punishment  of  the  impenitent.  It  also  implies 
that  God  has  been  defeated  in  His  own  universe, 
not  merely  by  one  man  here  and  there,  but  by  the 
whole  human  race.  It  tells  us  explicitly  that  God 
feels  Himself  unable  to  forgive  until  He  has  inflicted 
some  penalty  upon  some  one  for  the  wrong-doing  of 
mankind.  It  assumes,  moreover,  that  none  of  us 
can  free  ourselves  from  the  dreadful  entail;  indi- 
vidually we  are  not  responsible  for  the  entrance  of 
sin  into  the  world,  but  we  are  just  as  guilty  as  though 
we  had  started  pure  and  flawless;    in  the  sight  of 


208  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

God  we  are  all  foul  and  polluted,  and  we  ought  to 
feel  it.  We  are  all  miserable  sinners,  no  matter 
how  reputable  the  life  we  have  lived;  and  until  we 
realise  this  God's  pardoning  love  cannot  even  begin 
to  take  effect,  and  the  merits  of  the  Saviour  will 
be  of  no  avail. 

I  am  quite  convinced  that  this  way  of  viewing  the 
subject  of  human  imperfection  has  done  a  great 
deal  of  mischief  in  the  world,  and  is  having  bad 
results  to-day.  Thank  God,  men  are  breaking 
away  from  it  in  spite  of  the  theologians  and  even  in 
spite  of  the  preachers.  It  has  made  much  misery, 
and  has  hindered  untold  thousands  from  rising  into 
a  purer  and  more  spiritual  experience  of  the  relations 
of  the  soul  and  God,  while  it  has  led  men  to  despise 
rather  than  to  reverence  human  nature.  Somehow 
we  fail  to  see  that  when  we  pour  scorn  and  contempt 
upon  humanity  we  are  bringing  an  indictment  against 
God,  "in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being."  The  greater  part  of  the  ordinary  so-called 
Christian  doctrine  of  sin  is  a  sorrow-breeding  lie. 
We  have  got  to  change  the  whole  point  of  view.  We 
must  not  continue  to  let  men  think  that  unless  they 
can  screw  themselves  into  the  mood  of  self-loathing 
they  are  regarded  with  disfavour  in  the  eyes  of  God. 
Instead  of  thinking  of  humanity  as  a  Divine  ideal 
gone  grievously  wrong,  we  must  think  of  it  as  a 
Divine  unfolding,  the  full  glory  and  plenitude  of 
which  is  not  yet.  We  must  think  of  human  life  as  a 
progress,  and  sin  as  the  occasional  wandering  from 


THE   TURNING    FROM   INIQUITY  209 

the  king's  highway.  We  must  think  of  it  as  an 
upward  reach,  and  sin  as  the  temporary  failure  to 
attain.  An  athlete  sets  forth  to  run  a  race,  and  in 
so  doing  slips  and  falls ;  but  he  would  not  have  fallen 
if  he  had  never  run.  A  soldier  goes  out  to  contend 
against  the  foe,  and  suffers  a  severe  defeat;  but  he 
would  not  have  been  defeated  if  he  had  never  fought. 
Is  not  this  a  truer  point  of  view  than  the  impossible 
talk  about  an  otherwise  perfect  world  marred  by 
the  presence  of  the  intruder  called  sin?  Every 
upward  step,  every  expansion  of  experience,  every 
emergence  of  higher  possibilities,  renders  humanity 
liable  to  fail  in  new  regions  of  attainment ;  but  these 
failures  are  the  failures  of  the  child  learning  to  walk. 
We  may  sum  the  matter  up  by  saying  that  sin  is 
not  a  positive  force  marring  a  previously  perfect 
world,  but  the  incidental  failure  or  failures  of  human- 
ity in  its  upward  progress  towards  the  full  realisation 
of  the  eternal  life  which  is  eternal  love. 

If  once  we  can  grasp  this  simple  truth,  and  adopt 
the  corresponding  point  of  view,  we  shall  come  to 
see  that  there  is  no  sin  against  God  which  is  not 
also  a  sin  against  man.  If  once  we  can  get  men's 
minds  open  to  this  illuminating  fact,  the  gain  to  true 
religion  will  be  immeasurable.  For  one  thing,  we 
shall  get  rid  of  all  unreality  in  our  confession  of  short- 
coming and  wrong-doing.  At  present,  we  come 
into  church  and  confess  sin  in  a  general  way  without 
seeming  to  realise  that  the  real  sin  consists  in  the 
injury  we  have  done  to  man  by  the  omissions  and 


210  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

commissions  of  our  selfish  everyday  life.  Just 
look  at  the  case  for  a  moment.  Ask  yourself  what 
you  have  ever  done  that  you  know  and  feel  to  be 
wrong;  ask  yourself  why  it  was  wrong,  and  you 
will  soon  see  that  it  was  because  you  have  caused 
pain  or  loss  to  some  individual,  or  some  circle  of 
human  beings,  or  humanity  as  a  whole.  If,  for 
example,  you  have  become  the  victim  of  an  evil 
habit,  you  are  not  only  injuring  yourself,  but  causing 
sorrow  and  hardship  to  those  who  love  you.  More- 
over, instead  of  fulfilling  your  vocation  in  blessing 
and  helping  humanity,  you  may  be  a  curse  to  it; 
you  are  doing  harm  not  only  by  the  evil  you  have 
wrought,  but  by  the  good  you  have  failed  to  perform. 
If  you  are  a  bad  husband  and  father,  your  life  is 
casting  a  blight  over  your  wife  and  children,  for 
no  life  can  be  isolated  or  lived  to  itself  alone.  It 
only  requires  a  little  reflection  in  order  to  see  this. 
There  is  not  a  single  human  action,  not  a  single 
human  thought,  which  can  properly  be  called  sinful 
which  is  not  a  wrong  done  to  humanity.  You  can- 
not sin  against  God  without  sinning  against  man. 
Any  evil  done  to  yourself  or  to  any  other  individual 
is  an  evil  done  to  the  whole  race.  It  is  no  use  trying 
to  separate  between  God  and  man  when  considering 
this  question.  All  sin  may  rightly  be  thought  of  as 
iniquity  —  that  is  in-equity  or  injustice  —  between 
the  individual  and  the  race  or  between  man  and 
man.  I  want  you  hard-headed  Englishmen  to  go 
home  and  think  this  out,  and  then  see  whether  it  is 


THE    TURNING    FROM    INIQUITY  211 

enough  to  come  to  church  and  confess  sin  as  though 
it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  effect  of  your  life  upon 
human  happiness.  The  world  is  suffering  to-day 
because  we  are  trying  to  score  off  one  another  in- 
stead of  helping  one  another,  trying  to  grab  and 
keep  the  good  things  of  earth  for  ourselves  instead 
of  making  them  a  means  of  blessing  to  our  kind. 
We  are  jealous  of  one  another;  cruel,  censorious, 
afraid  of  trusting  one  another;  crafty,  insincere, 
intent  upon  gaining  by  one  another's  loss.  Imagine 
the  world  purged  of  iniquity  —  in-equity  —  and  it 
would  be  heaven.  There  is  hardly  a  single  thing 
I  could  mention  as  being  a  cause  of  sadness  or  un- 
easiness to  those  who  are  now  listening  to  me  which 
is  not  traceable  in  some  way  to  human  selfishness, 
and  human  selfishness  is  bound  to  show  itself  in 
action  as  iniquity. 

Suppose  you  were  to  test  your  lives  in  this  way. 
Suppose  instead  of  saying,  "I  repent  of  all  my  sin 
against  God,"  you  omit  the  general  statement  for  a 
while  and  say:  "I  repent  of  having  shares  in  a  busi- 
ness which  is  dealing  unjustly  with  those  it  employs ; 
I  repent  of  trying  to  entrap  my  neighbour  into  a 
deal  which  would  have  been  a  gain  to  me  and  a 
loss  to  him ;  I  repent  of  having  been  a  bully  to  those 
in  my  power ;  I  repent  of  being  hard  upon  the  weak 
when  I  might  have  been  helpful  and  considerate; 
I  repent  of  making  home  miserable  by  showing  my 
worst  side  there  and  my  best  out  of  doors ;  I  repent 
of  having   considered   my   own   ease   and   comfort 


212  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

when  I  had  the  opportunity  of  lifting  burdens  from 
weary  backs;  I  repent  of  being  contented  with  my 
own  lot  when  there  were  wrongs  to  be  righted  and 
griefs  to  be  comforted  all  around  me;  I  repent  of 
refusing  to  respond  to  God's  call  to  be  a  helper  in 
work  that  lay  near  to  my  hand."  I  think  if  sin  were 
confessed  in  this  way  for  a  while  the  world  might 
get  on  faster.  All  such  things  as  these  are  iniqui- 
ties, and  sin  against  God  is  iniquity  against  man. 
This  brings  me  straight  to  Jesus.  Why  is  Jesus 
the  Saviour  and  Redeemer  of  the  world?  It  is 
because  He  saw  so  plainly  that  what  the  world  was 
suffering  from  was  lack  of  love.  Iniquity  is  only 
the  refusal  to  obey  the  law  of  love.  If  men's  hearts 
were  filled  with  love  the  world  would  be  filled  with 
joy.  Jesus  not  only  saw  this  but  lived  it,  and  to 
do  so  in  the  presence  of  the  blind  selfishness  of  hu- 
manity caused  Him  untold  suffering,  and  finally 
brought  Him  to  a  violent  death.  The  greatest 
iniquity  the  world  has  ever  perpetrated  was  the 
killing  of  the  Prince  of  life.  No  sooner  was  it  done 
than  some  of  those  who  had  known  and  loved  Jesus 
began  to  see  what  it  was  that  had  given  Him  such 
power  over  their  hearts.  They  found  too  that  He 
was  alive  and  helping  and  supporting  them  in  their 
endeavour  to  live  the  life  of  love  which  He  had 
lived.  This  discovery  came  to  them  as  a  kind  of 
emancipation,  a  wonderful  spiritual  uplift  setting 
them  free  from  their  former  worldly  feelings  and 
desires.     They  found  that  this  new  life  was  a  life 


THE   TURNING    FROM   INIQUITY  213 

of  far  greater  happiness  than  the  old  life  of  petty 
struggles  and  ambitions  had  ever  been.  They  just 
yielded  themselves  up  to  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  which 
to  them  was  the  spirit  of  love,  and  they  found  that 
it  transformed  their  whole  world. 

It  is  doing  so  to-day.  Faith  in  Jesus  is  faith  in 
Divine  love,  and  that  is  the  one  thing  needed  to  turn 
men  away  from  their  iniquities.  So  long  as  men 
go  on  fighting  one  another,  and  trying  to  get  the 
better  of  one  another,  so  long  will  the  world  be  dark 
and  wretched.  But  so  soon  as  men  become  willing 
to  take  up  the  Cross  in  their  desire  to  serve  and  help 
one  another,  they  will  learn  that  there  is  nothing  in 
the  wide  universe  so  strong  as  love.  It  is  all  so  simple 
and  yet  so  sweetly  true.  You  can  soon  prove  it  for 
yourself  if  you  like  to  try.  If  you  will  just  give 
yourself  up  to  the  service  of  this  dear  Redeemer 
of  mankind,  if  you  will  let  His  spirit  possess  you 
wholly,  you  will  never  need  to  fear  again.  There 
is  a  wonderful  rapture  in  being  delivered  from  self- 
service,  self-pity,  self-regard.  To  be  filled  with 
Divine  love  is  to  be  filled  with  joy  and  power.  There 
is  a  glorious  exhilaration  in  being  alive  when  you 
know  that  you  are  the  servant  of  God  to  one  great 
end,  namely,  filling  the  whole  earth  with  the  sweet- 
ness of  Divine  compassion  and  making  it  a  king- 
dom of  love. 


THE   CLEANSING   LIFE 

"If  we  walk  in  the  light,  as  He  is  in  the  light, 
we  have  fellowship  one  with  another,  and  the 
blood  of  Jesus  Christ  His  Son  cleanseth  us 
from  all  sin."  —  i  John  i.  7. 

It  is  somewhat  remarkable  that  the  latter  part 
of  our  text  should  be  so  frequently  quoted  apart 
from  the  former,  and  yet,  as  can  easily  be  seen  from 
a  scrutiny  of  the  whole  passage  in  which  it  appears, 
the  writer  never  meant  that  the  two  should  be  con- 
sidered independently.  The  latter  part  of  the  text, 
indeed,  is  immediately  dependent  upon  the  former. 
When  this  fact  is  taken  into  account  the  effect  is 
rather  striking.  According  to  the  writer  of  this 
epistle,  "the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  cleanseth  us 
from  all  sin"  —  if  we  walk  in  the  light.  This  is 
hardly  the  way  in  which  we  are  usually  accustomed 
to  hear  the  matter  stated.  It  is  far  more  commonly 
put  thus:  The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  will  cleanse 
you  from  all  your  sins  if  you  will  only  accept  by 
faith  the  benefits  of  His  atoning  work.  But  accept- 
ance on  faith  and  walking  in  the  light  are  surely  not 
quite  the  same  thing.  There  must  be  some  ratio 
between  the  two,  but  walking  in  the  light  does  not 
imply  a  completed  action;  rather  it  implies  some- 
thing which  is  continually  going  on.  Let  us  look 
into  this  question,  for  it  is  a  highly  important  one. 

214 


THE   CLEANSING   LIFE  215 

To  get  at  the  meaning  of  the  text  we  shall  have  to 
try  to  get  at  the  bottom  of  the  terms  employed  in  it, 
and  that  will  involve  putting  some  prepossessions 
out  of  our  minds. 

To  begin  with,  let  me  remind  you  that  the  writer 
of  this  epistle  belonged  to  the  great  Alexandrian 
school,  and  therefore  his  favourite  ideas  and  ways 
of  putting  things  are  those  which  were  character- 
istic of  the  Alexandrian  thinkers,  especially  Philo. 
Now,  one  of  Philo's  principal  sayings  was  that  God 
is  light.  He  meant  that  God  is  the  universal  mind, 
the  mind  which  contains  nothing  of  error,  and  from 
which  no  truth  is  hidden ;  God  knows  all,  and  sees 
it  as  a  whole.  The  Alexandrian  Christians  gave 
this  conception  a  great  ethical  value.  They  thought 
of  knowing  and  loving  as  being  the  same  thing.  He 
that  loves  knows  life,  the  life  of  God,  as  it  really 
is.  To  be  filled  with  love  is  to  have  found  the  heart 
of  things.  A  further  way  of  putting  the  same  truth 
was  to  declare  that  wherever  the  tlame  of  love,  the 
spirit  of  pure  unselfishness,  was  kindled  in  a  human 
heart,  there  God  was  present  as  the  light  of  the  world. 
This  light  is  never  wholly  absent  from  any  man, 
but  sometimes  it  is  a  mere  glimmer  in  the  darkness. 
To  the  God  who  indwells  humanity  —  and  who  is 
present  in  every  human  soul,  however  dark  that 
soul  may  be  —  these  old  thinkers  gave  the  name 
of  the  Word,  the  Son,  or  the  eternal  Christ,  "The 
light  that  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the 
world." 


2l6  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

This  is  the  meaning  of  the  term  employed  in  the 
first  part  of  our  text.  The  writer  says  we  must 
walk  in  that  light  —  the  light  which  is  love  —  if 
we  would  be  in  harmony  with  all  the  rest  of  exist- 
ence. We  have  to  be  true  to  it,  and  refuse  to  sub- 
stitute anything  else  for  it.  We  must  obey  this 
inward  light,  the  truth  which  is  love,  and  we  shall 
dwell  with  God.  This  is  not  merely  believing  some- 
thing; it  is  being  and  doing  something.  "Doing 
the  truth,"  the  writer  of  this  epistle  calls  it. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  second  part  of  the  text. 
W^hat  is  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ?  Some  of  you 
may  think  at  once  that  this  is  a  question  which 
requires  no  answer,  for  every  one  knows  the  answer 
already;  but  I  am  not  so  sure  about  that.  By  the 
blood  of  Christ  the  Johannine  writers  never  mean 
the  actual  physical  blood  which  was  shed  on  Cal- 
vary. That  blood  was  all  spilled  in  a  few  dreadful 
hours;  it  fell  on  the  ground,  and  there  was  an  end 
of  it.  But  there  was  another  kind  of  blood,  of 
which  that  blood  was  the  symbol,  and  which  made 
Jesus  willing  for  that  blood  to  be  shed  —  namely, 
the  forth-given,  freely-offered  life  of  Christ,  the 
God  in  man.  Jesus  revealed  that  life,  lived  that 
life,  gave  that  life,  and  in  giving  it  called  it  forth  in 
others.  Jesus  never  did  anything  else  than  give 
His  life  all  through  His  earthly  ministry.  The 
light  by  which  He  walked  was  the  love  of  God, 
and  that  love  made  Him  desire  to  give  Himself 
completely  to  the  task  of  drawing  all  men  into  a 


THE   CLEANSING   LIFE  217 

holy  fellowship  with  God.  No  sacrifice  could  have 
been  more  complete  than  the  sacrifice  which  came 
to  an  end  on  Calvary,  whereby  Jesus  demonstrated 
in  the  fullest  degree  the  love  of  God  in  man  giving 
itself  to  and  for  man.  Do  not  think  of  that  sacrifice 
as  though  God  had  arranged  it  in  some  formal 
way  in  order  that  He  might  be  free  to  forgive  sins. 
What  happened  simply  was  that  a  perfectly  noble 
and  unselfish  human  being  was  killed  by  a  wicked 
world,  but  the  spirit  in  which  He  lived  and  died  went 
on  making  others  willing  to  live  the  same  life.  That 
spirit  in  other  people  —  the  spirit  of  self-sacrificing 
love  —  was,  and  is,  the  real  blood  of  Christ ;  it  is  a 
spirit  of  wonderful  redeeming  power. 

A  third  question  we  must  ask  before  passing  on. 
What  is  the  sin  which  is  here  referred  to?  Well, 
without  entering  into  any  elaborate  explanation, 
let  me  say  that  it  is  that  spirit  in  human  nature 
which  tends  to  make  a  man  look  after  himself  at 
the  expense  of  his  fellows.  It  is  the  exact  opposite 
of  the  spirit  of  Christ.  If  the  spirit  of  Christ  is  the 
spirit  which  sacrifices  self  for  the  good  of  others, 
sin  is  the  spirit  which  sacrifices  others  for  the  sake 
of  self.  If  the  spirit  of  God  is  the  spirit  of  light, 
this  is  the  spirit  of  darkness.  It  is  the  source  of 
nearly  all  the  unhappiness  in  the  world  to-day.  To 
cleanse  the  world  from  the  presence  of  this  evil 
spirit  is  the  one  great  thing  that  needs  to  be  done  in 
order  to  save  it  and  unite  it  to  God. 

You  can  now  see  quite  plainly  where  the  writer  of 


2l8  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

our  text  is  taking  us.  He  is  no  obscurantist,  this; 
he  means  every  word  he  says,  and  he  knows  quite 
well  why  he  says  it.  He  does  not  put  his  case  quite 
in  the  same  way  that  a  modern  thinker  would  put 
it  if  he  were  stating  it  for  the  first  time,  but  those 
for  whom  this  man  wrote  would  not  be  in  any  doubt 
as  to  his  meaning;  they  were  used  to  this  way  of 
putting  things.  Such  terms  as  those  I  have  now 
examined  had  a  well  understood  value  and  signifi- 
cance for  the  Greeks  and  Jews  of  Alexandria  and 
places  like  Alexandria.  Their  mental  symbols 
were  not  those  which  we  use  now  in  our  ordinary 
everyday  speech,  but  they  were  quite  good  symbols, 
with  a  moral  and  spiritual  content  of  great  beauty 
and  power.  The  only  danger  in  using  them  to-day 
is  that  we  may  use  the  form  without  the  content. 
Do  not  let  us  make  that  mistake  now.  Let  me 
urge  you  to  put  out  of  your  minds  at  once  any  inter- 
pretation of  these  words  which  involves  the  accept- 
ance of  something  for  which  you  cannot  see  a  good 
reason. 

Now  I  will  make  bold  to  say  that,  when  you  come 
to  think  of  it,  you  cannot  see  any  good  reason  why 
our  Lord  Jesus  should  have  had  to  die  on  Calvary 
in  order  that  God  might  feel  Himself  free  to  forgive 
human  sin.  Thousands  of  hymns  will  be  sung 
this  week  and  thousands  of  sermons  preached  in 
which  the  assertion  will  be  made  that  by  His  sac- 
rificial death  Jesus  freed  mankind  from  its  guilt, 
and  that  all  we  have  now  to  do  in  order  to  be  jus- 


THE   CLEANSING    LIFE  219 

tified  before  God  is  to  claim  the  benefit  of  that 
finished  work.  But  that  is  simply  not  true,  and 
no  one  could  possibly  show  any  good  reason  why 
it  should  be  true.  There  is  not  a  hint  or  a  sugges- 
tion in  my  text  that  this  was  the  result  effected  by 
the  death  of  Jesus.  Jesus  was  tortured  to  death, 
not  by  God,  but  by  man.  The  spirit  of  love  in 
Him  came  into  sharp  conflict  with  the  spirit  of 
ignorance  and  hate  in  His  murderers,  and  overcame 
it  by  submitting  to  the  worst  that  it  could  do.  Every 
one  who  has  ever  loved  Jesus  since  that  day  has  felt 
the  power  of  that  same  spirit  in  his  heart.  To  love 
Jesus  is  to  walk  in  the  light.  How  could  it  be  other- 
wise? The  passionate  loyalty  of  Peter,  James, 
John,  and  later  the  Apostle  Paul,  to  the  risen  and 
exalted  Jesus,  was  caused  by  the  fact  that  Jesus 
lived  the  atoning  life,  a  life  that  submitted  to  death 
rather  than  change  its  holy  purpose.  Trust  in 
Him  at  once  resulted  in  the  uprising  of  that  same 
life  in  their  own  hearts.  It  made  them  like  Jesus, 
and  cleansed  them  from  the  presence  and  power  of 
the  spirit  of  darkness  and  death,  which  we  call  sin. 
Try  to  understand  this,  for  it  is  perfectly  simple  as 
well  as  gloriously  true.  The  only  way  to  save  a 
man  from  the  dominion  of  sin  is  to  bring  him  under 
the  power  of  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  the  spirit  of  light 
and  love,  the  spirit  of  harmony  with  God.  The 
longer  a  man  lives  under  the  dominion  of  that  spirit 
the  less  opportunity  does  sin  obtain  within  him  and 
the  more  does  he  become  like  Jesus.     In  fact,  just 


220  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

in  proportion  as  he  ceases  to  be  a  sinner  does  he 
become  a  saviour.  This  is  precisely  what  the  writer 
means  by  this  text  of  ours,  and  he  could  not  have 
told  us  anything  more  beautiful.  To  walk  in  the 
light  of  that  truth  gives  the  spirit  of  Christ  full  oppor- 
tunity within  us,  and  the  blood  of  Christ,  that  is, 
the  forth-given  life  of  Christ,  the  life  of  God  in 
every  man,  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin. 

But,  some  one  will  say:  You  have  not  told  us 
everything.  Think  of  the  terrible  condition  of  those 
who  are  without  God  and  without  hope  in  this 
world.  Think  of  the  broken-hearted  man  with  a 
guilty  past  from  which  he  cannot  get  free.  Think 
of  the  sinner  whose  burden  of  sin  is  so  great  that 
he  feels  he  can  never  get  rid  of  it  in  this  world  or  the 
next,  and  that  atonement  can  never  be  made.  What 
have  you  to  say  about  a  moral  problem  such  as  this  ? 

Well,  I  have  nothing  different  to  say  from  what 
has  already  been  said,  but  that  is  sufficient.  The 
truth  thus  declared  in  my  text  will  cover  every  moral 
problem  that  can  possibly  arise.  I  think  it  would  be 
true  to  say  that  comparatively  few  of  the  men  and 
women  before  me  feel  the  burden  of  personal  guilt 
to  be  so  awful  that  they  cannot  expect  forgiveness 
from  God  without  some  drastic  outside  action  on  the 
part  of  a  redeemer,  and  yet  every  one  of  you  would 
admit  and  deplore  the  presence  and  the  power  of 
sin  in  your  lives.  But  even  if  it  were  so,  even  if 
there  were  some  man  here  to  whom  life  is  now  a 
black  midnight  because  of  some  wicked  deed  or 


THE   CLEANSING    LIFE  221 

course  of  action  in  the  past,  the  memory  of  which 
is  an  unremitting  torture,  the  same  principle  would 
hold  good.  The  blood  of  Christ  will  cleanse  you 
from  that  foul  sore  if  you  walk  in  the  light.  But 
you  must  walk  in  the  light.  If  you  have  anything 
hidden  away  which  you  ought  to  acknowledge, 
and  dare  not  acknowledge  for  fear  of  painful  con- 
sequences, you  are  not  walking  in  the  light.  Bring 
that  thing  out  of  the  darkness  and  show  it  to  God. 
If  you  have  injured  any  one,  do  your  best  to  make 
restitution,  for  that  is  what  this  writer  means  by 
doing  the  truth.  You  cannot  make  full  restitu- 
tion —  no  one  ever  can ;  but  you  can  put  away 
coward  fear  and  do  your  best,  and  God  never  asks 
more  than  that.  Come  out  into  the  light.  Have 
nothing  in  your  life  that  you  dare  not  face  out.  Be 
true  at  all  costs,  and  see  what  follows.  You  will 
feel  the  peace  of  heaven  enter  your  storm-tossed 
soul.  You  will  not  be  left  to  fight  your  battle  alone, 
nor  will  you  feel  that  you  are.  All  the  love  in  the 
universe  will  come  to  your  help,  and  will  break  one 
by  one  the  chains  that  bind  you  to  your  evil  past. 
There  is  nothing  which  needs  to  be  done  for  you 
which  it  cannot  do.  It  will  conform  you  to  the 
likeness  of  Jesus  by  separating  you  from  sin  and 
uniting  you  to  eternal  love.  Remember  that  when 
a  man  has  become  so  changed  in  spirit  and  outlook 
upon  life  as  to  be  utterly  incapable  of  a  sin  of  which 
he  was  formerly  guilty,  he  is  now  as  though  that 
sin   had   never   been   committed.    He   is   cleansed 


222  NEW  THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

from  the  stain  of  it.  He  is  a  new  man.  Hence- 
forth his  greatest  joy  is  to  be  a  living  sacrifice  to  the 
ideal  of  Jesus.  He  has  escaped  from  selfhood  into 
the  life  of  God. 

There  is  a  class  of  sins  to  which,  of  course,  it  is 
not  so  easy  to  apply  this  principle,  but  it  holds  good 
all  the  same  if  you  only  give  it  time  enough.  And 
no  lesser  principle  will  do  anything  at  all  to  help 
in  such  a  case.  I  mean,  say,  where  a  man  has 
blighted  and  ruined  another  life  than  his  own, 
and  cannot  overtake  the  mischief  he  has  done.  In 
such  a  case  repentance,  if  genuine,  would  mean 
bitter  and  unavailing  sorrow.  If  it  did  not,  there 
would  be  something  sadly  wrong  with  the  quality 
of  the  repentance.  I  verily  believe  there  are  some 
people  in  the  world  who  hardly  dare  to  repent  of 
their  wrongdoing,  because  they  know  that  other 
lives  which  they  have  blackened  still  remain  in  sin. 
Did  any  of  you  grown  men  ever  lead  a  weak  lad 
wrong?  Did  you  ever  teach  foulness  to  a  pure 
heart?  Did  you  ever  introduce  an  innocent  being 
to  scenes  where  he  or  she  was  not  strong  enough  to 
stand  for  purity  and  truth?  Then  I  do  not  envy 
you  your  state  of  mind  when  you  think  of  your  record. 
You  have  a  good  deal  to  put  right  besides  your  own 
salvation.  In  fact,  there  is  no  salvation  for  you 
which  has  no  relation  to  these  victims  of  your  evil 
days.  But,  for  your  comfort,  let  me  tell  you  that 
the  same  thing  applies  to  salvation  in  general.  If 
you  are  truly  penitent  you  will  find  that  it  is  your 


THE   CLEANSING   LIFE  223 

business  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  is  lost,  here 
and  hereafter,  and  all  the  love  of  Christ  in  the  spirit- 
ual universe  is  with  you  in  the  task.  That  is  what 
God  wants  you  to  do,  and  you  must  never  mind 
how  much  it  costs  you  to  do  it.  It  will  demand 
your  very  life-blood,  and  you  must  not  withhold 
it.  The  blood  of  Christ  will  be  shed  in  you  and 
through  you  for  the  sins  of  the  world. 

Go,  all  of  you,  to  your  divinely  appointed  task 
of  manifesting  the  love  of  God  to  a  perishing  world. 
Do  not  suffer  anything  to  keep  you  back  from  it. 
If  you  are  a  sinner,  that  is  the  best  way  to  get  free 
from  your  sin.  And  the  more  you  can  rise  above 
sin  the  more  you  will  go  on  pouring  forth  that  sac- 
rificial, wonder-working  life,  just  as  the  mounting 
sun  of  springtime,  the  light  of  heaven,  becomes  the 
life  of  every  leaf  and  flower  that  struggles  for  expres- 
sion upon  earth. 

He  whose  heart  is  full  of  tenderness  and  truth, 
Who  loves  mankind  more  than  he  loves  himself, 
And  cannot  find  room  in  his  heart  for  hate, 
May  be  another  Christ.     We  all  may  be 
The  saviours  of  the  world,  if  we  believe 
In  the  Divinity  that  dwells  in  us 
And  worship  it,  and  nail  our  grosser  selves, 
Our  tempers,  greeds,  and  our  unworthy  aims. 
Upon  the  Cross.     Who  giveth  love  to  all 
Pays  kindness  for  unkindness,  smiles  for  frowns, 
And  lends  new  courage  to  each  fainting  heart, 
And  strengthens  hope  and  scatters  joy  abroad. 
He  too  is  a  redeemer,  son  of  God. 


OUR  MORAL  LIMITATIONS 

"Take  away  the  filthy  garments  from  him."  —  Zech.  iii.  4. 

This  passage  was  written  about  520  years  before 
Christ  was  born.  It  refers  to  a  time  of  new  but  not 
very  hopeful  beginnings  in  the  later  history  of  the 
Jews.  We  need  to  know  a  little  about  that  period 
before  we  can  rightly  understand  and  enter  into  the 
spirit  of  the  text.  There  is  no  more  interesting 
book  in  the  world  than  the  Old  Testament,  even 
from  the  human  point  of  view;  but  it  has  suffered 
greatly  at  the  hands  of  its  interpreters.  I  wish  it 
could  be  more  intelligently  handled  even  to-day 
by  some  of  its  most  devoted  readers.  They  fail 
to  take  account  of  the  historic  perspective,  and  there- 
fore they  fail  to  appreciate  a  great  part  of  its  moral 
and  religious  value.  For  instance,  this  book  of 
Zechariah  becomes  illuminating  and  suggestive 
as  soon  as  we  take  account  of  the  motive  which 
impelled  the  author  to  write.  Some  of  you,  espe- 
cially the  younger  men,  may  regard  this  as  a  dry 
book.  So  it  is,  if  you  are  unable  to  place  yourself 
in  the  author's  circumstances  and  look  out  upon 
life  as  it  were  from  his  eyes.  If  you  can  do  that 
you  will  find  that  the  book  is  anything  but  dry. 
Suppose  we  try  to  do  it  now. 

224 


OUR   MORAL    LIMITATIONS  22$ 

The  central  event  in  later  Jewish  history  was  the 
great  captivity  in  Babylon.  The  flower  of  the  race 
was  carried  away  by  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  held 
in  thraldom  in  the  great  city  of  Babylon  for  more 
than  two  generations.  Cyrus  the  Persian  over- 
threw Babylon  about  the  middle  of  the  sixth  cen- 
tury B.C.,  and  gave  permission  to  these  exiles  to 
return  to  their  homeland,  to  resume  their  national 
life  and  reconstitute  their  national  worship.  He 
gave  them  no  military  protection  in  so  doing;  all 
he  gave  them  was  permission,  so  to  speak,  to  restore 
under  his  overlordship  the  life  that  had  been  rudely 
broken  by  Nebuchadnezzar.  When  these  people 
returned  to  their  own  land  they  were  very  poor; 
things  were  quite  different  with  them  from  what 
they  had  been  in  the  years  before  Nebuchadnezzar 
descended  upon  Jerusalem.  They  found  Palestine 
a  dreary  waste,  as  it  had  been  left  by  its  oppressors; 
Jerusalem  lay  a  ruin;  the  whole  territory  w^as  in- 
fested by  freebooters  and  border  raiders  from  neigh- 
bouring states;  consequently  they  could  not  at  once 
realise  the  hopes  with  which  they  had  set  out  upon 
their  return  journey  from  Babylon.  They  had 
been  home  about  twenty-five  years  before  they  began 
to  rebuild  the  Temple.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  from 
this  time  forward  Israel  was  never  without  a  foreign 
master.  People  looked  wistfully  back  upon  the 
lost  splendour  of  the  days  of  David  and  Solomon; 
they  were  longing  for  a  restoration  of  those  great 
days,   the  palmy  age  of  ancient  Israel.     We  find 

Q 


226  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

echoes  of  this  ideal  in  the  New  Testament.  You 
remember  the  contemporary  prophecy  concerning 
Jesus:  He  was  to  receive  the  throne  of  His  father 
David,  and  of  His  kingdom  there  was  to  be  no  end. 
You  remember,  too,  the  pathetic  lament  of  the  two 
who  were  journeying  to  Emmaus  when  Jesus  over- 
took them.  They  said  sorrowfully  to  one  another: 
We  trusted  that  it  had  been  He  which  should  have 
redeemed  Israel.  For  five  hundred  years  these 
people  had  been  longing  for  the  impossible  —  the 
restoration  of  the  old  kingdom,  the  days  of  mag- 
nificence and  splendour,  the  days  of  Solomon  and 
his  father  David.  They  never  came  again.  Some 
great  preachers  of  the  time  of  our  text  realised  this, 
and  began  to  tell  the  people  that  it  was  not  so  desir- 
able as  they  supposed  that  Israel  should  be  materi- 
ally great.  Nehemiah,  for  instance,  said  to  them 
in  effect:  Do  not  trouble  any  more  about  political 
dominance  and  splendour;  be  content  with  the  far 
nobler  mission  of  being  God's  moral  and  spiritual 
witness  in  the  world.  So  their  message  henceforth 
is  a  spiritual  one:  Rebuild  the  Temple;  let  that 
be  the  centre  and  symbol  of  the  spiritual  work  that 
you  have  to  do  for  the  world. 

These  were  the  conditions  under  which  Zechariah 
began  to  write  and  speak.  He  found  the  people 
disheartened,  and  he  wanted  to  encourage  them; 
he  found  they  were  giving  up  hope  of  a  restora- 
tion of  national  prestige,  and  he  wanted  to  point 
out  to  them  their  truer  vocation;   therefore  the  pur- 


OUR   MORAL   LIMITATIONS  227 

pose  of  his  book  is  to  teach  the  people  to  recognise 
that  vocation,  and  to  symboHse  and  express  it  by 
setting  to  work  in  earnest  upon  the  rebuilding  of 
the  Temple.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the  book, 
this  is  why  it  was  written,  and  it  is  mainly  owing  to 
the  efforts  of  Zechariah  and  a  few  prophets  like 
him  that  the  Temple  was  actually  built  at  last, 
remaining  a  witness  for  generations  to  Jehovah  in 
the  midst  of  the  nations  of  the  earth. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  text  itself.  Zechariah  here 
describes  one  of  a  number  of  visions  which  he  uses 
in  a  parabolic  sense.  He  seems  to  see  Joshua,  the 
high  priest,  the  spiritual  representative  of  Israel, 
standing  before  the  angel  of  the  Lord.  "The  angel 
of  the  Lord"  probably  is  the  accredited  representa- 
tive of  Jehovah  in  any  age;  it  means  the  man  with 
spiritual  vision,  and  it  may  therefore  mean  the 
prophet  himself  and  those  like  him.  Poor  Joshua 
stands  clothed  in  filthy  rags,  and  Satan  stands  near 
to  resist  him.  "Satan"  here  is  not  quite  the  Satan 
of  Christian  tradition.  He  is  not  necessarily  a 
wicked  being  at  all,  he  is  simply  one  whose  function 
it  is  for  the  moment  to  accuse  this  representative 
of  spiritual  Israel  at  the  bar  of  God.  The  Lord 
refuses  to  listen  to  the  accusation,  and  instead  issues 
a  command:  "Take  away  the  filthy  garments 
from  him."  He  continues,  "Set  a  glittering  diadem 
upon  his  brow"  —  the  symbol  of  victory  —  "clothe 
him  in  royal  garments."  Then  the  angel,  turning 
to   Joshua,   says:    "Behold,   I  have   caused   thine 


228  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

iniquity  to  pass  from  thee.  .  .  .  Thus  saith  the 
Lord  of  Hosts:  If  thou  wih  walk  in  My  ways,  if 
thou  wih  keep  My  charge,  then  thou  shalt  also 
judge  My  house,  and  shalt  also  keep  My  courts, 
and  I  will  give  thee  places  to  walk  among  these 
that  stand  by."  It  has  been  suggested  that  we  have 
here  the  original  of  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son, 
I  hardly  think  that  was  so,  because  though  our 
Lord's  acquaintance  with  the  Old  Testament  was 
greater  than  that  of  most  of  us,  I  do  not  think  He 
needed  any  special  inspiration  or  prompting  in  His 
employment  of  picture  or  parable  to  teach  spiritual 
truth;  still  the  resemblance  is  striking.  Our  text 
is  almost  an  equivalent  of  "Bring  forth  the  best 
robe  and  put  on  him,  and  put  a  ring  on  his  hand 
and  shoes  on  his  feet.  For  this  my  son  was  dead 
and  is  alive  again,  and  was  lost  and  is  found."  I 
do  not,  however,  think  that  Zechariah  had  this  far- 
reaching  evangelical  significance  of  the  truth  in  his 
mind  when  he  uttered  it;  I  repeat,  his  object  was 
simply  to  hearten  and  encourage  the  Jews  in  the 
practical  work  of  rebuilding  the  Temple  and  in  the 
spiritual  work  of  fulfilling  their  true  mission  and 
vocation  amongst  the  nations  of  the  earth.  Zecha- 
riah did  not  see  the  universal  application  of  the  truth 
as  it  was  made  by  Jesus.  There  is  a  principle  here 
which  goes  very  much  farther  than  the  prophet  him- 
self saw,  and  it  is  my  task  to  attempt  to  set  that 
principle  before  you. 

One  of  the  great  problems  before  the  religious 


OUR   MORAL   LIMITATIONS  229 

and  philosophical  mind  of  to-day  is  the  problem 
of  personality.  Many  of  us  hardly  know  what  to 
think  about  it.  Some  of  our  oldest  assumptions 
concerning  it  have  been  overthrown  of  late;  some 
of  the  familiar  landmarks  of  thought  have  been 
wiped  out.  For  instance,  we  have  been  accustomed 
to  assume  that  personality  and  self-consciousness 
meant  almost  the  same  thing,  were  practically  co- 
extensive; that  is,  that  your  thought  or  your  know- 
ledge concerning  yourself  represents  all  that  you  are. 
Consequently  it  has  been  assumed  that  personality 
in  this  sense  was  self-contained,  and  absolutely 
exclusive  of  all  other  personality;  that  I  am  I,  and 
you  are  you;  and  that  if  we  exist  to  all  eternity  I 
shall  remain  I  and  you  will  remain  you,  and  that 
by  no  possibility  can  the  territories  of  our  respective 
beings  ever  overlap.  But  in  the  light  of  psycho- 
logical research  in  recent  times  we  have  seen  reason 
to  reopen  the  whole  question,  to  re-investigate  cer- 
tain of  these  assumptions.  We  are  being  told  that 
self-consciousness  has  a  very  restricted  area  com- 
pared with  personality.  If  you  have  been  on  board 
ship  in  mid-ocean,  doubtless  you  have  noticed  at 
night,  when  the  moon  was  shining,  that  you  were 
sailing  as  it  were  in  the  midst  of  a  disc  of  light,  which 
might  extend  for  many  miles  on  every  side  of  you, 
and  yet  beyond  it  there  was  a  vast  extent  of  unillu- 
mined  surface  of  the  illimitable  ocean.  That  is  a 
not  inapt  figure  of  what  the  psychologists  are  telling 
us  about  ourselves.     This  self-consciousness  of  ours, 


230  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

which  seems  so  real,  complete,  and  all-exhaustive, 
is  after  all  like  the  illuminated  disc  on  the  surface 
of  a  vast,  dark,  and  mysterious  ocean  of  being.  Or, 
again,  it  has  been  compared  to  an  island  in  the 
Pacific:  every  one  of  the  beautiful  islands  there  is 
the  summit  of  a  mountain  which  may  be  five  miles 
deep;  that  portion  which  lies  beneath  the  surface 
of  the  ocean  is  vastly  greater  than  that  which  appears 
above  it.  So,  the  psychologists  say,  our  true  per- 
sonality is  vastly  greater  than  our  consciousness 
of  it;  and,  what  is  more,  the  submerged  portion 
is  the  seat  of  inspiration,  and  does  more  work  for 
us  than  the  conscious  mind  has  ever  done;  so  they 
call  it  the  sub-conscious  mind.  I  feel  that  to  be  a 
somewhat  unfortunate  title.  Sometimes  it  crosses 
my  vision  that  perhaps  that  so-called  sub-conscious 
mind  is  the  true  self;  perhaps  it  is  more  really  con- 
scious than  this  somewhat  illusory  self-conscious- 
ness that  we  feel  to  be  all.  Genius  itself  has  been 
described  as  the  uprush  of  subliminal  faculty.  We 
all  know,  however  commonplace  we  may  be,  that 
some  of  our  best  thoughts  are  those  which  come 
unbidden;  which,  as  it  were,  leap  into  conscious- 
ness from  out  of  that  mysterious  region  I  have  de- 
scribed, which  is  vastly  greater  than  you  have  any 
idea  of,  for  that  personality  of  yours  came  from  God 
and  is  only  partly  held  in  trust  by  you. 

Great  as  that  discovery  is,  if  such  it  be,  its  corol- 
lary is  greater  still.  It  is  that  our  assumption  con- 
cerning the  all-exclusiveness  of  our  particular  per- 


OUR   MORAL    LIMITATIONS  23 1 

sonality  is  not  justified  by  the  facts.  Thought 
can  be  flashed  from  mind  to  mind  to-day  apparently 
without  the  intermediary  of  any  material  substance 
whatever.  You  are  thinking,  perhaps,  of  some 
particular  sacred  song  that  once  moved  you  greatly; 
whilst  you  are  thinking  of  it,  your  neighbour  in  the 
pew  begins  to  hum  it.  Or  you  are  just  going  to 
speak  at  the  table  about  something  which  is  of  family 
importance,  and  you  are  anticipated  by  husband, 
wife,  or  child :  there  seems  to  be  a  mysterious  inter- 
relation of  minds.  How  far  one  being  can  inter- 
penetrate another  without  ceasing  to  be  itself  I  do 
not  know,  but  at  least  we  have  got  as  far  as  this, 
that  our  supposed  isolation  is  not  really  a  fact:  we 
are  members  one  of  another,  and,  if  you  press  the 
truth  a  little  farther,  trustees  of  one  another. 

The  influence  of  these  conceptions  upon  religious 
thought  cannot  fail  to  be  enormous  and  far-reaching. 
Their  moral  significance  is  quite  as  great  as  their 
metaphysical  interest;  I  have  only  mentioned  the 
latter  in  order  that  I  might  get  at  the  former.  There 
are  two  ways,  broadly  speaking,  of  describing  man's 
moral  status  in  relation  to  God:  one  is  that  human 
nature  is  essentially  bad,  with  perhaps  certain  possi- 
bilities of  good;  the  other  is  that  human  nature  is 
essentially  good,  with  certain  liabilities  to  evil.  The 
former  view  has  been  the  one  usually  taken  by 
Christian  teachers.  They  find  small  justification 
for  it  in  the  New  Testament,  least  of  all  in  the  words 
of  Jesus,   but  it  is  older  than   Christianity   itself. 


232  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

Jesus  Himself  was  called  a  sinner  by  those  who 
taught  it.  The  priests  and  the  Pharisees  exclaimed 
to  one  of  His  disciples  when  they  cast  Him  out, 
"Thou  wast  altogether  born  in  sin,  and  dost  thou 
teach  us?"  As  it  has  been  taught  by  some  of 
the  greatest  of  Protestant  epoch-makers  —  Martin 
Luther,  for  instance  —  it  has  been  held  to  mean  the 
total  depravity,  the  unrelieved  wickedness,  of  human 
nature.  It  has  been  contended  that  the  human 
soul  is  so  dark,  so  utterly  depraved,  that  God  had 
to  instil  some  portion  of  Himself  into  our  human 
nature  to  make  it  possible  for  us  even  to  wish  to  be 
better.  I  do  not  pause  to  explain  in  theological 
terms  how  it  has  been  held  that  these  lamentable 
conditions  came  to  exist;  suffice  it  to  say  that  with 
strange  unanimity  Christian  teachers  have  taught 
that  the  fault  was  always  in  man,  that  he  could 
have  helped  himself  and  did  not.  The  human 
intellect  and  conscience  have  revolted  against  the 
more  terrible  implications  of  that  horrible  doctrine. 
Few  men,  if  any,  ever  held  it  consistently;  in  fact,  I 
think  I  might  dare  to  go  so  far  as  to  say  not  one, 
even  when  he  was  most  convinced  that  he  did.  It 
told  the  mother  nursing  her  babe  at  her  breast,  that 
babe  over  whom  her  soul  yearned,  which  was  to 
her  as  a  breath  from  heaven,  to  believe  that  it  was 
in  reality  a  little  fiend,  whose  proper  habitat  was 
the  infernal  regions.  Great  Puritan  preachers 
have  described  these  dear  little  ones  as  being  in 
God's  sight   vipers,   venomous  reptiles,   loathsome 


OUR   MORAL    LIMITATIONS  233 

creatures  only  fit  to  be  destroyed.  What  a  horrible 
perversion  of  the  teaching  of  Him  who  said,  "Suffer 
the  little  children  to  come  unto  Me,  and  forbid  them 
not,  for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  But 
I  am  glad  it  v^^as  made,  because  it  has  carried  as  far 
as  it  could  go,  to  its  logical  and  repellent  extreme, 
that  view  of  human  nature  which  I  have  been  indi- 
cating to  you.  It  is  a  false  perspective;  no  one  has 
ever  held  it  consistently  from  the  first.  The  truth 
about  human  nature  is  far  greater,  richer,  nobler 
than  Christian  thought  has  even  yet  articulated. 
The  reason  why  I  have  mentioned  that  repellent 
distortion  of  a  great  truth  is  that  our  Christian  think- 
ing has  not  yet  shaken  itself  free  from  it;  the  lan- 
guage of  our  sermons,  prayers,  and  hymns  often 
seems  to  presume  it.  We  speak,  act,  and  think  as 
though  humanity  had  no  worth  at  all  in  the  sight  of 
God,  were  innately  bad,  and  that  the  thing  about 
which  God  is  chiefly  concerned  is  human  sin  and 
how  to  get  rid  of  it.  What  a  poor,  parochial  view 
of  the  meaning  of  the  universe !  The  truth  is  that 
man  is  essentially  good;  evil  is  but  the  temporary 
limit  imposed  upon  the  nature  which  is  God-like, 
it  is  not  his  true  home,  it  does  not  represent  his 
eternal  destiny;  it  is  the  filthy  garment  which  hides 
and  obscures,  but  which  ought  never  to  have  been 
identified  with  the  pure  spirit  of  life  beneath.  This 
is  the  message  of  Jesus:  That  man  has  always 
been  worth  the  saving,  and  that  he  only  needed  to 
be  shown  where  he  belonged,  recalled  to  himself, 


234  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

and  restored  to  the  Father's  home;    he  never  has 
been  expelled  from  the  Father's  heart. 

Perhaps  I  need  to  explain  a  little  more  in  detail 
the  application  of  this  truth,  for  fear  you  may  mis- 
take my  meaning.  Some  of  you  may  suppose  that 
this  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  the  worst  of  men, 
contented  in  their  wickedness,  do  not  need  to  be 
improved !  It  is  the  precise  opposite ;  it  is  the 
declaration  of  the  false  life  as  opposed  to  the  true. 
Evil  is  of  the  nature  of  limitation ;  it  is  the  darkness 
where  the  light  ought  to  be.  It  is  a  negative,  not 
a  positive,  term.  You  may  call  evil  positive  if  you 
like,  but  if  so  you  must  call  good  negative;  when 
the  one  is  the  other  is  not.  When  the  gas  lamps 
are  lit  in  the  street  you  become  aware  of  the  shadow 
that  was  not  there  before:  is  the  shadow  as  real  as 
the  light?  Not  at  all:  it  only  marks  the  place 
where  it  ought  to  be;  if  the  light  could  take  posses- 
sion of  that  place  the  darkness  would  be  swallowed 
up,  not  merely  driven  out.  Evil  is  a  larger  term 
than  sin ;  it  represents  all  the  unideal  in  the  universe 
of  God  —  pain,  poverty,  want,  conflict,  struggle, 
mourning,  woe.  There  is  a  purpose  underneath 
the  imposing  of  that  condition  which  is  worthy 
both  of  God  and  man,  for  I  can  see  no  means  of 
declaring  the  essential  nature  of  good  apart  from 
the  discipline  of  struggle  and  pain.  To  call  evil 
eternal  is  a  contradiction  in  terms;  it  is  nothing 
more  than  the  temporal  privation  of  good,  it  is  that 
against  which  good  proves  and  realises  itself.     It 


OUR   MORAL   LIMITATIONS  235 

is  of  God's  appointment  and  for  us  to  overcome. 
Sin  is  simply  acquiescence  in  limitation,  the  choice 
of  the  lower  and  lesser  in  the  presence  of  the  higher 
and  fuller.  It  is  not  man's  true  life,  not  his  resting- 
place.  It  is  the  filthy  garment  that  hides  a  Divine 
being.  How  far  a  man  is  responsible  for  his  own 
transgressions  none  of  us  is  in  a  position  to  say;  all 
that  we  dare  affirm  is  that  we  know  when  we  are 
doing  wrong  and  when  we  are  to  blame,  but  we 
know  not  when  our  neighbour  is  culpable.  Mr. 
Mallock,  in  his  "Reconstruction  of  Belief,"  gives 
an  example  (for  the  accuracy  of  which  of  course 
I  cannot  vouch)  of  a  man  who  through  an  accident 
in  a  goods  yard  was  deprived  of  a  portion  of  his 
brain,  and  this  reacted  unfavourably  upon  his  char- 
acter. Whereas  before  he  had  been  noble  and  up- 
right, generous-hearted,  conscientious  in  the  dis- 
charge of  his  duty,  he  was  afterwards  cunning, 
peevish,  base,  and  unreliable  in  his  conduct.  Mr. 
Mallock  may  not  have  stated  the  whole  of  the  case, 
but  all  it  would  appear  to  prove  is  that  the  area  of 
the  self-expression  of  the  soul  of  that  man  was 
limited.  A  dear  friend  was  telling  me  the  other 
night  something  about  his  own  father,  a  godly  man, 
noble  and  upright,  who  had  served  his  Master, 
Christ,  through  the  greater  part  of  a  long  life.  In 
the  evening  of  his  days,  and  largely  in  consequence 
of  his  laborious  and  unsparing  efforts  in  the  cause  of 
truth,  he  fell  seriously  ill.  The  illness  affected  his 
mind,  and,  said  his  son,  "It  seemed  afterwards  as 


236  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

though  he  were  somehow  a  lesser  man,  not  only 
intellectually,  but  even  morally.  Henceforth  he 
seemed  to  be  a  little  more  irritable,  grasping,  self- 
conscious,  anxious  for  praise.  Some  uncharitable 
people  declared  that  now  he  was  revealed  in  his 
true  colours,  that  before  he  had  been  masquerading, 
but  we  who  loved  him  at  home  knew  better.  This 
was  not  my  father;  my  father  was  that  former, 
larger  man."  I  might  have  added,  "Your  father 
was  more  and  greater  even  than  you  ever  knew." 
As  poor  Robert  Burns  once  wrote  — 

Thou  knowest  Thou  hast  formed  me  with  passions  wild  and 

strong, 
And  listening  to  their  witching  voice  has  often  led  me  wrong. 

My  experience  as  a  Christian  minister,  with  the 
cure  of  souls,  teaches  me  the  overwhelming  truth 
of  that  pathetic  utterance  of  the  Scottish  poet,  I 
cannot  put  myself  in  my  neighbour's  place.  I  know 
nothing  of  the  predisposing  influences  in  his  case, 
I  know  nothing  of  the  hardness  of  his  struggle  before 
he  fell;  only  God  knows  that.  Let  none  of  us  take 
the  place  of  the  accuser  of  souls,  or  we  may  hear 
from  the  great  white  throne  the  words,  "The  Lord 
rebuke  thee,  O  Satan.  Take  away  the  filthy  gar- 
ments from  him."  My  message  to  you  —  and  I 
utter  it  with  all  solemnity,  believing  it  to  be  God's 
word  —  is  you  are  not  your  sin.  You  never  were. 
That  is  the  filthy  garment  that  hides  the  child  of 
God.     Sin  is  the  iron  gate  you  have  closed  upon 


OUR   MORAL   LIMITATIONS  237 

yourself,  behind  which  your  imprisoned  soul  cries 
out  for  life. 

How  shall  we  put  into  practice  the  exhortation  of 
the  text?  Look  into  the  life  of  Jesus.  We  are  not 
only  greater  than  we  seem,  we  are  the  keepers  of 
one  another's  souls.  It  would  lift  a  great  deal  of 
the  hopelessness  out  of  the  yearning  sorrow  that 
some  of  you  feel  for  the  wandering  and  the  lost  if 
you  could  only  just  look  at  them  as  Jesus  did. 
"  When  he  came  to  himself  he  said,  I  will  arise  and 
go  to  my  father."  Every  sinner  must  come  to  him- 
self by  the  feeding  upon  husks  on  this  side  of  death 
or  on  the  other,  and  every  saviour  must  go  on  seeking 
while  there  is  a  sinner  left.  Every  wanderer  away 
into  the  darkness,  the  midnight  of  the  soul,  must 
return  unto  the  Divine  home  to  wear  the  diadem  of 
victory;  and  you  and  I  are  God's  appointed  mes- 
sengers to  publish  that  truth  to  all  the  nations  upon 
earth.  That  is  why  we  ever  heard  it,  that  is  why 
it  has  become  a  living  experience  to  some  of  us. 
If  you  would  save  a  man,  you  must  believe  in  him. 
If  he  cannot  believe  in  himself,  you  must  make  it 
possible  for  him  to  do  it.  You  must  help  him,  lift 
him,  restore  and  encourage  him,  claim  him  for  God, 
take  away  the  filthy  garments  from  him.  That 
principle  holds  just  as  true  of  your  own  individual 
life,  dear  friends,  those  of  you  who  feel  like  sinners 
and  those  of  you  who  do  not.  Is  there  a  sin  taking 
hold  upon  you  whose  very  presence  is  a  humiliation, 
and  which  is  working  havoc  and  ruin  in  your  soul? 


238  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

Remember,  you  are  not  that  sin,  and  therefore  you 
can  rise  above  it.  Is  there  a  weakness  that  you  dare 
not  confess  to  men,  but  that  you  have  often  confessed 
and  lamented  over  to  God?  Remember,  you  are 
not  that  weakness,  and  that  God's  strength  is  yours. 
What,  then,  are  you  ?  You  are  a  son  of  God,  whom 
the  Elder  Brother  came  to  seek  and  save.  Rise, 
child  of  the  Highest,  claim  your  heritage  and  enter 
upon  eternal  life. 


THE   ANGEL   OF   THE   SOUL 

"Take  heed  that  ye  despise  not  one  of  these 
little  ones;  for  I  say  unto  you,  That  in  heaven 
their  angels  do  always  behold  the  face  of  My 
Father  which  is  in  heaven."  —  St.  Matthew 


This  passage  is  peculiar  to  St.  Matthew's  gospel, 
although  it  here  forms  part  of  a  discourse  which 
has  its  parallels  in  Mark  and  Luke,  as  we  saw  during 
the  reading  of  our  lesson.  Although  this  is  the 
only  record  we  have  of  it,  there  can  hardly  be  a 
question  as  to  its  genuineness.  It  accords  well 
with  the  view  that  Jesus  always  took  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  child-life.  In  spirit  and  meaning  it  is  closely 
akin  to  the  beautiful  saying  contained  in  the  very 
next  chapter,  "Suffer  little  children,  and  forbid 
them  not,  to  come  unto  Me ;  for  of  such  is  the  king- 
dom of  heaven." 

This  is  not  the  first  time  I  have  preached  from  this 
text,  but  I  think  I  can  now  see  a  little  more  deeply 
into  its  meaning  than  was  formerly  the  case.  The 
circumstances  under  which  this  sentence  was  first 
uttered  appear  to  have  been  as  follows:  According 
to  St.  Matthew,  the  disciples  came  to  Jesus  asking, 
"Who  is  the  greatest  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven?" 
and  for  reply  Jesus  took  a  little  child  into  His  arms 

239 


240  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

and  said,  "Except  ye  turn,  and  become  as  little 
children,  ye  shall  not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven."  After  thus  speaking  of  the  childlike 
quality  as  being  necessary  for  the  spiritual  life, 
Jesus  went  on  to  talk  about  the  child  himself,  and 
to  warn  His  hearers  against  seeking  to  do  harm  to 
any  such.  "Whoso  shall  cause  one  of  these  little 
ones  who  believe  in  Me  to  stumble,  it  were  better 
for  him  that  a  millstone  were  hanged  about  his  neck, 
and  that  he  were  drowned  in  the  depth  of  the  sea." 
"Take  heed  that  ye  despise  not  one  of  these  little  ones; 
for  I  say  unto  you,  That  in  heaven  their  angels  do 
always  behold  the  face  of  My  Father  which  is  in 
heaven." 

Two  questions  emerge  here.  First,  Is  Jesus 
speaking  only  of  child-life?  Further,  What  does 
He  mean  by  the  expression,  "Their  angels  do  always 
behold  the  face  of  My  Father"?  With  regard  to 
the  former  of  these  questions,  it  seems  to  me  that, 
although  Jesus  begins  with  a  reference  to  child- 
life,  He  goes  on  to  refer  to  human  nature  in  general 
in  so  far  as  it  exhibits  the  childlike  quality.  "These 
little  ones  which  believe  on  Me"  meant  Peter,  James, 
and  John,  and  the  rest  of  His  following.  They 
described  the  simple  souls  that  followed  Him  and 
loved  Him  for  His  own  sake.  The  "little  ones"  of 
the  earth  are  the  lowly,  the  obscure,  the  despised, 
the  forsaken,  and  even  the  morally  weak.  In  the 
heart  of  Jesus  there  was  always  a  great  compas- 
sion for  such  as  these.     He  was  never  hard  upon 


THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    SOUL  24I 

those  upon  whom  the  world  was  hard  already.  The 
vices  He  most  detested  were  cruelty  and  spiritual 
pride. 

Let  us  understand,  then,  to  begin  with,  that  by 
the  "little  ones"  in  our  text  Jesus  means  the  teeming 
multitudes  of  commonplace  men  and  women  who 
have  no  great  opinion  of  themselves,  who  have 
never  had  much  of  a  chance  in  this  world,  and  who 
are  more  like  ignorant,  wayward  children  than 
anything  else.  It  is  of  such  as  these  that  He  speaks 
when  he  says,  "Their  angels  do  always  behold 
the  face  of  My  Father."  "It  is  not  the  will  of  your 
Father  which  is  in  heaven  that  one  of  these  little 
ones  should  perish."  The  use  of  the  word  angels 
is  no  doubt  a  reference  to  the  current  Jewish  belief 
in  guardian  angels,  although  probably  it  also  meant 
something  more.  What  that  something  more  is 
we  shall  see  presently.  Let  us  first  see  a  little  as 
to  what  the  contemporary  belief  in  guardian  angels 
was.  In  the  earlier  books  of  the  Old  Testament 
the  term  "angel"  usually  stands  for  some  manifesta- 
tion or  expression  of  God  Himself.  It  seldom 
means  a  heaven-sent  messenger.  The  pious  Israel- 
ite of  primitive  times  did  not  care  to  use  the  word 
Jehovah  too  freely;  hence,  when  he  wanted  to 
say  that  God  had  revealed  Himself  to  him,  he  said 
that  "the  angel  of  the  Lord"  had  appeared  to  him. 
What  he  meant  was  that  in  some  way  or  other,  in 
dream  or  vision,  or  some  other  fashion,  God  had 
made   His  will   known   to  His  worshipper.     That 


242  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

was  the  sense  in  which  the  phrase  "the  angel  of  the 
Lord"  was  first  employed, as  you  can  see  from  all 
the  earlier  books  of  the  Bible.  As  time  went  on, 
however,  the  Old  Testament  writers  began  to  think 
and  to  speak  a  little  differently.  They  began  to 
make  a  distinction  between  God  and  His  messenger, 
and  to  think  of  Him  as  making  use  of  subordinate 
beings  for  the  declaration  of  His  will.  These  sub- 
ordinate beings  they  called  angels.  Sometimes  the 
angel  was  only  a  God-inspired  man,  a  prophet, 
a  seer  of  truth.  Sometimes  he  was  thought  of  as  a 
supernatural  being,  a  denizen  of  another  world, 
an  angel  as  the  ordinary  child  of  to-day  is  taught 
to  think  of  the  word.  Sometimes,  again,  the  term 
angel  was  extended  to  cover  great  natural  upheavals, 
special  portents,  such  as  earthquakes  and  floods. 
It  must  be  in  this  sense,  for  example,  that  the  word 
is  employed  in  the  well-known  sentence,  "He 
maketh  His  angels  spirits"  —  that  is,  "He  maketh 
his  angels  sweeping  winds"  —  "His  ministers  a 
flame  of  fire." 

In  the  century  and  a  half  preceding  the  birth  of 
Jesus,  a  still  further  conception  of  the  meaning  and 
function  of  angels  grew  up.  In  the  Book  of  Daniel, 
for  instance,  you  will  notice  that  nations  as  well  as 
individuals  are  supposed  to  have  their  guardian 
angels.  When  you  get  home  just  take  the  Book 
of  Daniel,  turn  to  the  tenth  chapter,  and  read  the 
section  from  verse  13  to  verse  21;  you  will  see  that 
conception  distinctly  stated.     The  "angel"  idea  is 


THE   ANGEL    OF   THE    SOUL  243 

rendered  in  the  Authorised  Version  of  this  passage 
as  "prince."  The  "princes"  here  are  supernatural 
beings.  Every  nation  had  its  prince  or  guardian 
spirit.  The  guardian  spirit  of  Israel,  as  you  will 
see  from  this  particular  passage,  was  supposed  to  be 
the  Archangel  Michael.  Again,  Daniel  is  repre- 
sented as  saying  in  the  lions'  den,  "My  God  hath 
sent  His  angel,  and  hath  shut  the  lions'  mouths, 
and  they  have  not  hurt  me."  I  have  before  told 
you  how  the  Book  of  Daniel  came  to  be  written, 
and  of  the  fact  that  it  is  drama,  a  beautiful  story, 
written,  like  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  to  hearten  the 
people  in  a  time  of  national  struggle  and  distress. 
Of  course,  this  does  not  detract  in  the  least  from 
the  value  of  the  book  —  quite  the  contrary.  In  the 
apocryphal  literature  which  belongs  to  this  period 
there  are  numerous  references  to  the  popular  belief 
in  the  agency  of  guardian  spirits.  No  doubt  the 
idea  of  a  guardian  angel  for  every  nation  was  the 
outcome  of  the  gradually  clarifying  monotheism 
of  Israel.  You  all  know  that  the  early  Israelites 
believed  in  Jehovah  as  their  tribal  God,  just  as 
other  nations  had  their  own  gods.  When  under 
the  influence  of  the  great  prophets  they  came  to 
think  of  Jehovah  as  the  God  of  the  whole  earth, 
the  deities  of  the  various  nations  sank  in  popular 
view  into  the  position  of  guardian  angels.  By  the 
time  that  Jesus  came  the  belief  in  guardian  angels 
of  all  sorts  was  widely  accepted.  The  Sadducees 
did  not  believe  in  them,  but  practically  all  the  com- 


244  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

mon  people  did,  and  Jesus  Himself  appears  to  have 
done  so,  as  we  learn  not  only  from  this  passage,  but 
from  others  like  it,  such  as,  "There  is  joy  in  the 
presence  of  the  angels  of  God  over  one  sinner  that 
repenteth."  Read  in  the  light  of  contemporary 
belief,  therefore,  the  obvious  meaning  of  the  beautiful 
passage  which  is  our  text  was  as  follows:  "Do  not 
be  so  foolish  as  to  despise  the  poor,  the  lowly,  the 
weak,  or  those  upon  whom  the  burden  of  life  presses 
heavily.  These  are  God's  little  ones.  They  are 
dear  to  Him,  although  they  seem  to  be  of  so  little 
account  in  this  world.  He  watches  over  them  and 
cares  for  their  welfare.  He  does  not  wish  any  of 
them  to  perish  on  the  way  to  the  everlasting  king- 
dom of  His  love  and  joy.  In  heaven  their  place 
is  already  prepared,  and  the  guardians  of  their  des- 
tiny, the  angels  of  God,  behold  with  unveiled  face 
the  glory  of  the  Lord."  Plainly  this  is  a  poetic 
expression  of  a  great  truth. 

Jesus  had  a  poet's  mind.  I  am  sure  you  will  not 
object  to  my  saying  that.  I  repeat,  Jesus  had  a 
poet's  mind,  a  fact  which  distinguishes  Him  from 
the  best  of  His  immediate  followers.  For  instance, 
in  the  course  of  his  missionary  journeys  the  Apostle 
Paul  passed  through  some  of  the  most  beautiful 
scenery  in  the  world,  but  in  his  writings  he  never 
says  a  word  about  it.  How  different  with  Jesus ! 
He  was  interested  in  everything  beautiful  that  came 
under  His  notice,  both  in  nature  and  in  human 
life.     He  talks  about  the  lihes  of  the  field,  the  birds 


THE   ANGEL   OF   THE   SOUL  245 

of  the  air,  the  sheep  on  the  hillsides,  the  widow  who 
cast  her  mite  into  the  treasury;  and,  when  He  wanted 
an  illustration  of  the  spirit  that  was  likest  God's, 
He  took  a  little  child  between  His  knees  and  bade 
His  bearded  followers  look  at  him.  They  were 
only  children  themselves,  and  He  wanted  them  to 
see  how  beautiful  was  childlike  simplicity.  Yes, 
Jesus  had  the  poet's  vision,  and  everything  spoke 
to  Him  of  God. 

But  does  this  poetic  statement  about  guardian 
angels  mean  no  more  than  I  have  said  so  far?  Are 
we  simply  to  understand  on  the  authority  of  Jesus 
that  we  are  looked  after  from  the  side  of  the  unseen 
by  some  representative  or  mediator  of  the  goodwill 
of  God,  some  angel  whose  special  work  it  is  to  see 
that  evil  does  not  destroy  us  in  spite  of  ourselves? 
Well,  I  cannot  but  think  that  there  is  something 
more  here,  and  that  Jesus  knew  it  and  meant  it.  I 
will  tell  you  what  it  is.  We  may  or  may  not  have 
a  guardian  spirit  as  distinct  from  ourselves.  I  am 
really  not  much  interested  in  the  question.  My 
heavenly  Father  is  guardian  enough  for  me.  But 
I  do  believe  with  all  my  heart  that  we,  every  one  of 
us,  have  a  higher  self,  a  diviner  being  than  we  know, 
the  angel  of  the  soul,  ever  present  before  the  throne 
of  God.  I  would  fall  back  on  the  ancient  Old 
Testament  idea,  and  say  that  this  guardian  self  of 
ours  is  a  manifestation  of  God  Himself.  It  is  at 
once  His  being  and  ours,  the  archetypal  reality  to 
which  we  in  the  end  shall  conform.     It  seems  to 


246  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

me  that  it  is  to  this  truth,  which  is  thousands 
of  years  old,  that  Jesus  was  alluding  in  our 
text. 

This  is  not  an  easy  conception  to  make  clear  to 
everybody,  but  I  will  try  to  state  it  as  plainly  and 
as  simply  as  I  know  how.  It  is  far  from  being  mere 
speculation,  nor  does  it  belong  only  to  the  region  of 
Christian  theology.  The  general  tendency  of  the 
modern  science  of  psychology  goes  to  confirm  it. 
Within  the  past  ten  years  or  so  —  nay,  much  more 
than  that  —  workers  in  the  field  of  human  psychol- 
ogy have  developed  a  theory  which  has  come  to  be 
called  the  theory  of  the  sub-conscious  mind.  Stated 
in  broad  general  terms,  it  seems  to  be  something 
like  this:  A  vast  amount  of  our  ordinary  mental 
action  goes  on  outside  the  region  of  our  conscious- 
ness altogether.  We  have  all  read  recently  of  a 
distinguished  lady  novelist  who  declares  that  when 
she  has  selected  a  theme  for  treatment  she  simply 
turns  it  over  to  her  sub-conscious  mind  and  lets  it 
alone  for  a  while.  Later  on  she  finds  that  somehow 
it  has  matured  without  her  conscious  co-operation. 
Of  course,  she  does  not  mean  that  her  sub-conscious 
mind  has  saved  her  all  hard  work.  Nothing  of 
the  kind.  She  means  that  it  has  told  her  what  to 
think  about  a  theme,  and  then  her  reason  sets  to 
work  to  plan  it  out.  No  less  a  man  than  Dr.  Clifford 
told  me  the  other  night  that  he  likes  to  select  his 
subjects  well  in  advance,  for  a  similar  reason.  I 
can  bear  testimony  to  the  same  truth  myself,  as  no 


THE    ANGEL    OF   THE    SOUL  247 

doubt  most  of  the  members  of  this  congregation 
could  in  their  own  case. 

The  theory  of  sub-conscious  cerebration  —  to 
employ  a  scientific  phrase,  forgive  me  for  using  it  — 
is  now  so  well  established  that  it  can  hardly  be 
seriously  disputed.  Some  eminent  psychologists 
carry  the  theory  much  farther  than  others  do.  They 
hold  that  the  conscious  mind  is  but  a  tiny  thing  as 
compared  with  the  sub-conscious.  They  hold  that 
the  latter  is  infinitely  the  larger  and  the  truer  self. 
This  is  a  startling  fact  if  you  just  think  of  it.  John 
Smith,  who  supposes  that  he  knows  all  about  him- 
self, knows  comparatively  little :  he  is  but  the  smaller 
portion,  a  tiny  corner  of  his  real  personality.  The 
truer  self  is  in  the  region  of  the  sub-conscious.  The 
sub-conscious  is  the  seat  of  inspiration  and  of  intui- 
tion. Most  of  us  know  that  we  usually  see  a  truth 
long  before  we  are  able  to  reason  it  out.  The 
deeper  mind  flashes  it  to  that  surface  mind  which 
we  call  the  reason,  and  the  latter  sets  to  work  to 
justify  it.  Reason  plods  along  on  four  feet,  intui- 
tion soars  on  wings.  Most  of  our  best  scientific 
discoveries  are  made  in  this  way  —  first  the  flash 
of  intuition,  and  then  the  slow,  experimental  con- 
firmation of  what  has  thus  been  seen.  The  best 
thoughts  of  the  best  minds  in  every  field  of  thought 
come  in  this  way,  often  unbidden  and  unanticipated. 
Genius  itself  has  been  described  as  "an  uprush  of 
subliminal  faculty,"  perhaps  the  best  definition 
that  could  be  given.     Mind,  I  am  not  arguing  for 


248  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

intuition  as  against  reason.  We  need  both.  The 
sub-conscious  may  give  us  some  foolish  things  as 
well  as  some  wise  ones,  and  the  function  of  the 
reason  is  to  judge  and  decide  upon  the  material 
presented  to  us.  But  here  is  the  striking  thing 
about  this  theory,  the  reason  why  I  have  mentioned 
it  to  you  at  all.  It  seems  to  show  that  human  nature 
is  far  greater  and  more  complex  than  is  ordinarily 
known.  The  name  sub-conscious  is  a  poor  one 
for  the  region  thus  disclosed.  It  would  be  far  better 
to  speak  of  it  as  the  super-conscious.  The  con- 
viction it  forces  upon  one  is  this  —  we  every  one  of 
us  have  a  diviner  self,  our  true  being,  the  source  of 
all  our  best  inspirations,  the  guide  and  guardian 
of  our  growing  souls.  That  diviner  self  may  fitly 
be  termed  the  angel  which  doth  always  behold  the 
face  of  the  Father,  for  it  is  essentially  one  with  God 
Himself.  Looking  upon  this  expression  of  His  own 
being,  God  sees  us  as  we  essentially  are. 

There  are  great  questions  suggested  here,  into 
which  I  do  not  propose  to  enter  to-night,  although 
I  have  my  own  views  upon  them.  But  it  would 
not  be  honest  to  pass  them  by  unmentioned.  Will 
you  kindly  let  me  indicate  three  of  them  at  least? 
There  is  the  question  of  the  true  relation  of  the  being 
of  God  to  the  being  of  man.  Where  does  the  one 
leave  off  and  the  other  begin  ?  What  is  the  dividing 
line?  Frankly,  I  do  not  believe  there  is  any  dividing 
line,  although  it  seems  so  to  our  limited  consciousness. 
Our  being  is  God's,  not  some  of  it  merely,  but  all 


THE   ANGEL   OF   THE   SOUL  249 

of  it,  although  our  present  consciousness  of  it  is 
our  own.  The  spiritual  ideal  is  to  reach  the  stage 
when  we  can  say  with  fulness  of  knowledge,  and 
not  merely  as  an  act  of  faith,  "I  and  my  Father  are 
one."  A  further  and  almost  equally  difficult  ques- 
tion is  that  of  the  relation  of  the  deeper  self  to  that 
of  which  we  are  conscious.  To  all  intents  and 
purposes  it  would  seem  as  though  the  two  must 
be  separate  beings,  but  I  do  not  believe  they  are. 
It  only  seems  so  to  the  lower,  not  to  the  higher. 
I  must  just  leave  the  question  there.  The  third 
question  is  that  of  the  reason  why  there  has  ever 
been  a  lower  and  a  higher  at  all.  Why  are  we 
imprisoned  here?  Why  are  we  surrounded  with 
mystery  even  as  to  our  true  being  and  the  meaning 
of  our  life?  What  good  purpose  is  being  served 
in  the  sorrow  caused  by  ignorance  or  moral  failure, 
a  sorrow  which  every  one  of  us  is  compelled  sooner 
or  later  to  know?  These  are  problems  upon  which 
I  have  already  said  something  in  previous  sermons. 
I  do  not  want  to  spend  time  upon  them  to-night, 
although  they  cannot  be  ignored.  Let  me  com- 
prehend the  answer  to  them  in  this  one  general 
statement:  We  are  here  that  the  eternally  glorious 
reality  which  is  at  once  our  being  and  that  of  our 
heavenly  Father  may  manifest  its  true  nature.  That 
can  only  be  done  by  limiting  or  attenuating  its  re- 
sources. You  all  know  well  enough  that  the  thing 
you  most  reverence  in  the  life  of  any  man  is  that 
which   has   made    the   greatest    demand    upon   his 


250  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

better  nature  in  the  presence  of  adverse  circum- 
stances. Some  one  you  love  is  in  trouble,  for  ex- 
ample, and  at  once  you  fly  to  the  rescue.  Some- 
how the  experience  is  felt  to  be  a  grand  one,  and 
the  sweetness  of  the  relationship  thus  indicated  is 
thereby  enhanced.  Everything  worthy  in  human 
experience  has  to  become  manifest  in  this  way  — 
first  the  limitation,  and  then  the  great  infilling  of 
the  rising  tide  of  the  Divine  life.  It  is  just  this 
principle  which  has  given  the  Cross  of  Christ  its 
power  over  the  hearts  of  men.  As  I  have  said 
before,  one  Paul  with  his  thorn  in  the  flesh,  with  his 
conflicts  and  disciplines,  and  testing  times,  is  worth 
ten  thousand  seraphs  as  an  expression  of  the  inner- 
most of  God,  the  love  of  Christ  which  passeth  know- 
ledge. Give  me  the  Paul,  and  you  can  keep  the 
seraph.  This  is  a  tempting  theme,  but  I  must  not 
stay  any  longer  upon  it.  All  I  want  you  to  see  is 
that  these  three  questions  are  not  forgotten  in  my 
consideration  of  the  meaning  of  our  text. 

But  the  emphasis  of  the  text  itself  is  put  in  quite 
another  place.  The  beautiful  and  helpful  truth  it 
contains,  and  which  I  believe  Jesus  really  meant,  is 
that  we  are  one  and  all  already  ideally  present  in 
the  heart  of  God.  The  lowly  ones  of  the  earth  — 
ay,  and  the  great  ones,  too  —  are  immediately  and 
eternally  included  in  the  glory  of  God.  He  is  not 
on  that  side  and  we  on  this.  His  life  is  our  life, 
His  purpose  our  goal,  His  will  our  good.  Here  is 
a  truth  of  great  practical  importance,  and  one  which 


THE   ANGEL    OF   THE    SOUL  25I 

will  greatly  help  you  in  living  your  daily  life  if  you 
will  only  give  it  a  chance.  To  begin  with,  it  should 
teach  you  charity  and  reverence  for  human  nature. 
You  see  that  child  which  is  born  in  the  slum  tene- 
ment and  reared  in  filth  and  penury.  Ever  since 
she  was  a  baby  she  has  known  little  but  ill-usage. 
Blows  and  curses  have  been  her  daily  fare.  As 
she  has  grown  older  she  has  become  like  her  sinister 
surroundings.  She  is  coarse  and  unclean,  she  has 
developed  cunning  little  ways,  and  looks  upon  the 
outside  world  as  an  enemy  to  be  plundered.  Her 
very  face  tells  the  story  of  her  environment.  It  is 
not  beautiful,  although  it  is  a  child-face.  It  would 
be  a  miracle  if  it  were  beautiful.  It  is  stamped 
with  disease  and  suffering.  It  may  even  be  repul- 
sive to  you  at  first  sight.  You  would  hardly  look 
into  those  eyes  for  evidence  of  the  delicacy  and 
gentleness  of  pure  womanhood.  And  yet  in  this 
poor  child  of  poverty  and  shame  there  is  something 
great  and  noble,  something  that  speaks  of  heaven. 
Workers  amongst  the  poorest  of  the  poor  will  tell 
you  that  if  you  want  to  find  spontaneous  and  uncal- 
culating  kindness  you  cannot  do  better  than  go  to 
the  slums.  The  rich  do  not  know  how  to  give, 
in  comparison  with  the  poor.  Those  who  have  but 
little  in  this  world  are  generous  and  self-sacrificing 
to  the  last  degree.  The  harlot  will  share  her  last 
crust  with  her  hungry  sister  in  shame.  When  sick- 
ness or  misfortune  has  to  be  met,  the  poor  hold  to- 
gether in  a  way  that  their  wealthier  brothers  and 


252         NEW  THEOLOGY  SERMONS 

sisters  seldom  do.  No  doubt  all  this  is  consistent 
with  a  certain  amount  of  selfishness  and  even  bru- 
tality, but  it  really  seems  as  though  the  poor,  even 
the  degraded  poor,  get  nearer  to  the  great  heart  of 
things  than  those  of  a  more  artificial  kind  of  living 
are  able  to  do.  They  have  fewer  artificialities  to 
break  through.  The  soul  can  express  itself  more 
simply.  I  think  Jesus  must  have  seen  this  when 
He  said,  "Blessed  are  ye  poor,  for  yours  is  the  king- 
dom of  God."  "  It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through 
the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  the 
kingdom  of  God,"  although  "with  God  all  things 
are  possible."  What  I  mean  is  that  the  poor  are 
like  children;  they  are  simple  in  their  perceptions, 
wants,  desires,  and  feelings.  Even  those  who  have 
sunk  lowest  through  privation  and  want  often  reveal 
something  of  spiritual  beauty. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  their  poverty  makes 
this  possible.  Poverty  should  not  be.  In  a  con- 
dition of  things  where  every  one  had  enough  and 
there  was  no  privileged  order,  exactly  the  same 
truth  would  hold  good.  All  that  I  am  at  present 
contending  for  is  that,  let  the  outward  appearance 
be  what  it  may,  simple  souls  will  always  reveal 
something  of  God.  It  is  because  the  deeper  soul 
is  already  face  to  face  with  God,  and  belongs  to 
the  unseen  world  of  light  and  life.  "Take  heed  that 
ye  despise  not  one  of  these  My  little  ones  that  be- 
lieve on  Me ;  for  verily  I  say  unto  you,  that  in  heaven 
their  angels  do  always  behold  the  face  of  My  Father 


THE   ANGEL    OF   THE    SOUL  253 

which  is  in  heaven."  "It  is  not  the  will  of  your 
Father  which  is  in  heaven  that  one  of  these  little 
ones  should  perish." 

Take,  again,  the  most  trying  person  you  know, 
in  your  home  or  in  your  circle  of  friendship.  Per- 
haps there  is  one  member  of  your  family  who  has 
always  been  a  trial  and  an  anxiety  to  the  rest.  You 
cannot  rely  upon  his  word,  for  although  he  means 
all  his  promises  of  amendment  at  the  time  they  are 
made,  they  are  only  made  to  be  broken.  You  can 
never  be  quite  sure  that  he  has  told  you  all  the  truth 
about  his  latest  escapade,  whatever  it  may  have 
been,  and  you  know  well  the  unspeakable  torture 
of  finding  out  again  and  again  that  you  have  been 
deceived.  The  presence  of  a  character  like  this  in 
an  otherwise  ideal  home  is  an  inexplicable  problem 
which  baffles  theologians  and  psychologists  alike. 
One  weak,  shifty,  self-indulgent  man  will  cause 
more  pain  in  a  home  circle  than  the  most  wanton 
cruelty  can  commonly  do.  What  are  we  to  say 
about  it?  There  is  only  one  thing  that  can  save 
a  loving  heart  from  despair  in  such  a  case,  and  that 
is  that  the  occasional  gleams  of  goodness  and  ten- 
derness which  scintillate  from  such  a  weak  nature 
represent  the  truest,  the  deepest,  and  the  best  in 
him  after  all.  Deep  down  below  all  the  petty  dis- 
loyalties and  evasions  there  lives  the  diviner  being. 
God  give  you  eyes  to  see  it,  and  to  believe  that  in 
the  end  your  faith  and  loving-kindness  shall  cause 
what  is  higher  in  him  to  triumph  over  what  is  lower. 


254         NEW  THEOLOGY  SERMONS 

"It  is  not  the  will  of  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven 
that  one  of  these  little  ones  should  perish." 

I  see  the  feet  that  fain  would  climb, 
You  but  the  steps  that  turn  astray; 

I  see  the  soul  unharmed,  sublime, 
You  but  the  garment  and  the  clay. 

You  see  a  mortal  weak,  misled, 
Dwarfed  ever  by  the  earthly  clod; 

I  see  how  manhood  perfected 
May  reach  the  stature  of  a  God. 

The  same  perception  will  help  you  in  all  the  rela- 
tions of  your  own  daily  life.  You  will  be  able  to 
recognise  that  your  bitterest  enemy  is,  after  all, 
only  a  wayward  and  foolish  child,  and  that  he  can 
do  you  no  real  harm  unless  you  descend  to  the  level 
upon  which  he  is  assailing  you.  If  you  can  keep 
your  own  heart  free  from  the  taint  of  bitterness  you 
will  be  nearer  the  truth  not  only  about  yourself  but 
even  about  him,  and  in  the  end  the  higher  is  always 
stronger  than  the  lower.  Fight  with  the  weapons 
of  love,  and  you  will  soon  find  out  that  there  is  no 
foe;  for  in  heaven,  where  the  angel  of  the  soul  doth 
always  behold  the  face  of  the  Father,  all  is  harmony. 
And  heaven  is  not  in  some  distant  corner  of  the  uni- 
verse of  God.  It  is  here,  it  is  within  you,  it  is  wher- 
ever love  is,  it  is  wherever  the  spirit  of  Christ  is  to 
be  found.  "Now  we  see  through  a  glass,  darkly, 
but  then  face  to  face."  Think  about  this  truth, 
then,  for  yourselves.     When  the  sky  grows  dark  and 


THE   ANGEL   OF   THE   SOUL  255 

the  clouds  of  evil  gather  round  your  head,  lift  up 
your  eyes  in  trust  and  confidence  to  the  radiance 
that  lies  beyond  the  gloom  and  say,  "All  is  well,  for 
even  now,  let  appearances  be  what  they  may, 
mine  angel  doth  behold  the  face  of  my  Father. 
Nothing  that  comes  to  me  can  do  other  than  help 
me.  Shadows  cannot  frighten  me,  and  evil  is 
powerless  to  crush  me.     My  home  is  God." 


THE  VALLEY  OF  BACA 

"  Who  passing  through  the  valley  of  Baca  make 
it  a  well  (R.V.  'a  place  of  springs')."  —  Psalm 
Ixxxiv.  6. 

There  is  a  certain  obscurity  surrounding  this 
familiar  passage  which  has  never  been  wholly  dis- 
sipated. Most  of  us,  I  suppose,  have  chanted  it 
in  public  worship  without  pausing  to  ask  ourselves 
what  it  really  meant.  It  is  the  same  with  the  Chris- 
tian use  of  a  great  many  of  these  songs  of  ancient 
Israel;  we  appropriate  the  words  without  being 
always  aware  of  the  depth  and  beauty  of  the  images 
they  suggest.  I  think  it  is  so  with  the  passage  which 
forms  our  text.  Every  one  knows  it,  but  what 
idea  does  it  convey  to  the  mind?  What  does  it 
symbolise?  What  is  the  particular  spiritual  expe- 
rience thus  described? 

We  may  as  well  recognise  at  the  outset  of  our 
examination  into  this  subject  that  it  is  impossible 
to  say  with  absolute  certainty  what  the  valley  of 
Baca  really  was,  and  therefore  we  cannot  be  too 
confident  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  figure  suggested 
by  the  use  of  the  name.  But  for  all  that  I  think  we 
have  ground  for  believing  that  the  truth  thus  indi- 
cated is  fairly  obvious.  You  will  see  presently  what 
I  mean  by  saying  this.     The  traditional  interpreta- 

256 


THE   VALLEY   OF    BACA  257 

tion  of  this  passage  has  been  "the  valley  of  weeping," 
but  why  the  valley  of  weeping  no  one  seems  to  know. 
There  have  been  a  good  many  attempts  to  identify 
the  place  thus  referred  to.  The  Psalm  suggests 
that  it  was  a  locality  through  which  pilgrims  had 
to  pass  on  their  way  to  the  national  festivals  at  Jeru- 
salem. Apparently  the  poet  has  one  of  these  pil- 
grimages in  mind,  although  he  is  not  able  to  take 
part  in  it  himself.  Thus  he  writes  in  the  fifth  verse, 
"Blessed  is  the  man  whose  strength  is  in  Thee; 
in  whose  heart  are  the  highways  to  Zion."  Unable 
to  form  one  of  the  company  who  are  going  up  to 
worship  at  the  Temple,  he  follows  the  procession 
with  his  mind's  eye,  as  it  were,  and  turns  it  into  a 
figure  of  the  spiritual  life.  His  desire  to  go  is  real 
and  intense,  as  is  evident  from  the  opening  verses: 
"How  amiable  are  Thy  tabernacles,  O  Lord  of 
Hosts !  My  soul  longeth,  yea,  even  fainteth  for 
the  courts  of  the  Lord ;  my  heart  and  my  flesh  crieth 
out  for  the  living  God."  Every  pious  and  patriotic 
Jew  felt  more  or  less  like  this  on  the  occasion  of  the 
great  national  festivals.  But  our  poet  does  not 
content  himself  with  wishing  he  could  be  one  of 
the  throng  of  worshippers  in  Solomon's  glorious 
Temple.  He  sees  that  life  is  a  pilgrimage  anyhow, 
and  that  the  way  to  the  highest  experience  of  the 
love  and  goodness  of  God  often  lies  through  toil 
and  care  as  well  as  through  brightness  and  joy. 
But  he  sees,  too,  that  every  one  of  the  happenings 
of  life,  the  welcome  and  the  unwelcome,  the  glad 


258  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

and  the  painful,  may  be  so  appropriated  as  to  be- 
come the  means  of  abundant  blessing  leading  to 
clearer  vision  of  God.  Authorities  are  not  agreed 
as  to  the  exact  location  of  the  valley  of  Baca.  Some 
have  identified  it  v^^ith  the  valley  of  Achor,  v^^hich 
has  sinister  associations;  others  with  the  valley 
wherein  David  inflicted  a  severe  defeat  on  the 
Philistines,  as  recorded  in  2  Sam.  v.  22.  Renan, 
the  great  French  author  and  critic,  believed  it  to 
be  the  last  station  of  the  caravan  route  from  the 
north  to  Jerusalem.  But,  wherever  it  was,  it  was 
probably  a  bare  and  desert  place,  without  water, 
and  therefore  without  beauty.  The  thought  of  the 
Psalmist  thus  becomes  one  of  touching  sweetness 
and  suggestiveness.  He  regards  the  man  of  faith 
as  a  spreader  of  blessing.  He  turns  a  wilderness 
into  a  fruitful  land,  and  causes  springs  to  gush  forth 
where  none  but  he  could  find  them.  The  place  of 
death  becomes  transformed  at  his  touch  into  a  scene 
of  abundant  life;   sorrow  becomes  love  and  joy. 

An  obvious  illustration  of  the  truth  the  Psalmist 
has  in  mind  was  suggested  to  me  only  the  other  day. 
I  have  been  told  that  the  colony  of  British  Colum- 
bia, on  the  Pacific  slope  of  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
contained  at  one  time  a  number  of  canons,  or  deep 
valleys,  which  were  entirely  devoid  of  verdure  owing 
to  the  absence  of  water.  The  soil  was  rich  enough 
to  grow  anything,  but  owing  to  this  particular  lack 
it  presented  the  appearance  of  a  barren  wilderness. 
But  within  comparatively  recent  years  certain  lusty 


THE   VALLEY    OF    BACA  259 

pioneers  have  come  along  who  have  bored  deep 
shafts  beneath  the  arid  surface  of  these  various 
valleys  and  come  upon  the  much-needed  water 
supply,  with  the  consequence  that,  one  after  another, 
these  scenes  of  death  have  been  filled  with  luxuriant 
life  and  beauty.  The  comparison  between  the 
valley  of  Baca  and  these  unpromising  districts  of 
British  Columbia  is  quite  felicitous,  because  the 
conditions  appear  to  have  been  exactly  the  same 
in  both.  In  either  case  what  was  wanted  was  that 
some  one  should  come  along  with  sufficient  faith 
and  energy  to  turn  a  dry  and  cheerless  land  into 
"a  place  of  springs"  —  for  this  is  the  literal  transla- 
tion of  the  phrase  "make  it  a  well."  It  is  because 
the  valley  becomes  "a  place  of  springs"  that  it 
becomes  a  place  of  smiling  plenty. 

Few  will  be  inclined  to  dispute  the  correctness 
of  this  view  of  the  poet's  meaning.  The  valley  of 
Baca  is  a  desert  place  —  a  place  of  weeping,  if  you 
lil^e  — but  the  spiritual  man,  the  man  of  faith,  is 
able  to  draw  from  such  arid  experiences  their  hidden 
meaning,  so  that  the  desert  is  made  to  "rejoice  and 
blossom  as  the  rose."  I  think  this  is  a  very  beau- 
tiful conception,  and  one  which  compels  us  to  rev- 
erence this  unknown  singer  of  a  far-off  day,  whoever 
he  may  have  been.  For  it  is  just  as  true  to-day  as 
it  was  when  he  wrote,  and  I  think  it  will  repay  us 
to  try  to  apply  it  to  the.  conditions  under  which  we 
live  our  own  lives.  Keep  before  your  minds  the 
figure  of  the  pilgrimage  which  is  suggested  here. 


26o  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

This  eighty-fourth  Psalm  is  a  sort  of  synopsis  of 
Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress.  Here  we  are  shown 
the  pilgrim  on  his  way  to  the  Celestial  City.  Part 
of  the  road  lies  over  the  Delectable  Mountains  and 
past  the  Palace  Beautiful  to  Beulah  Land;  but  it 
also  winds  through  the  Valley  of  Humiliation  and 
of  the  Shadow  of  Death.  It  is  impossible  to  avoid 
the  latter  if  we  would  know  the  former.  But  the 
writer  of  the  Psalm  goes  farther  than  Bunyan  in 
one  particular.  He  tells  us  that  the  valley  of  Baca 
can  become  "a  place  of  springs,"  whereas  Bunyan 
simply  conducts  his  Christian  safely  through  it  and 
leaves  it  as  it  was  before.  Of  course  it  would  not 
be  fair  to  press  this  comparison,  for  no  illustration 
of  a  spiritual  truth  will  hold  good  in  all  its  applica- 
tions. Still  in  this  instance  I  think  we  may  say 
that  the  higher  use  of  the  figure  is  that  which  is 
made  by  the  Old  Testament  seer.  It  is  a  noble 
conception,  whatever  way  we  take  it.  We  may  look 
at  it  under  either  or  both  of  two  aspects.  We  may 
say,  in  the  first  place,  that  every  child  of  God  may 
meet  his  experiences  of  sorrow,  loss,  and  disappoint- 
ment in  such  a  way  that  he  fertilises  them  and  causes 
them  to  yield  their  fragrance  and  beauty  within  his 
own  soul.  Or,  in  the  second  place,  we  may  give 
to  the  figure  a  still  wider  meaning,  and  say  that  the 
man  of  faith  can  transform  the  place  of  pain  and 
dread  into  a  means  of  blessing  not  only  for  himself, 
but  for  his  fellow  creatures.  I  think  this  is  really 
the  way  we  ought  to  understand  this  passage,  for, 


THE   VALLEY   OF    BACA  261 

remember,  our  author  is  not  thinking  of  a  lonely 
pilgrimage  to  Zion,  but  of  the  march  of  a  great  com- 
pany bound  for  the  same  goal.  This  view  is  sup- 
ported by  the  verse  which  follows:  "They  go  from 
strength  to  strength,  every  one  of  them  in  Zion 
appeareth  before  God." 

Besides,  this  is  the  view  I  like  best.  There  is 
nothing  more  demoralising  than  self-absorption, 
either  in  sorrow  or  in  joy.  It  is  not  a  good  thing  to 
be  always  reminding  the  individual  Christian  how 
he  may  escape  this  and  rise  superior  to  that.  A  far 
better  and  nobler  attitude  to  take  is  that  of  urging 
upon  every  seeker  after  the  highest  the  duty  of 
endeavouring  to  turn  the  valley  of  Baca  into  a  place 
of  springs  for  one's  companions  as  well  as  for  all 
who  come  after.  The  happiest  people  on  earth  are 
those  who  can  do  this  ungrudgingly  and  without 
thought  of  recognition  or  reward.  The  farther 
one  can  get  away  from  self-regard  in  one's  activities 
the  better  for  one's  peace.  Nothing  is  more  tor- 
turing than  self-consciousness  in  religion  or  in  any- 
thing else.  I  mean  that  if  a  man  always  has  himself 
in  the  foreground  of  his  vision,  and  is  unable  to 
think  of  any  question  except  in  relation  to  himself, 
he  is  greatly  to  be  pitied.  This  self-consciousness 
may  show  itself  in  many  different  forms,  but  it  is 
always  the  same  root  evil.  It  keeps  the  soul  in 
fever  and  fret;  it  renders  life  a  continual  anxiety. 
Until  one's  thoughts  can  become  depolarised,  so 
to  speak,  and  centred  upon  something  in  which  self- 


262  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

interest  has  no  place,  peace  of  heart  is  impossible. 
I  have  noticed  over  and  over  again  that  the  modes 
in  which  this  self-thought  can  intrude  are  often  very 
subtle.  The  fumings  of  the  strong,  ambitious  man, 
for  instance,  are  at  bottom  due  to  exactly  the  same 
cause  as  the  neurotic  religious  doubts  of  some 
school-girl  who  is  so  interested  in  her  self-induced 
agonies  of  mind  that  she  fancies  every  one  else  must 
be  equally  so.  It  is  often  an  extremely  difficult 
thing  to  make  such  people  see  that  their  self-con- 
sciousness is  at  the  bottom  of  most  of  their  troubles. 
If  one  could  only  cut  them  free  from  it  spiritual 
progress  would  become  possible. 

This  it  is  which  makes  the  valley  of  Baca  a  valley 
of  weeping  for  them.  It  becomes  a  place  of  springs 
from  which  hidden  beauties  and  joy  arise  just  as 
soon  as  they  become  able  to  fix  their  gaze  upon  their 
goal  instead  of  upon  themselves.  More  than  once 
I  have  ventured  to  say  to  people  who  have  been 
worrying  about  the  state  of  their  soul,  "Let  your 
soul  alone,  and  set  to  work  to  gladden  the  world. 
You  will  find  your  soul  by  losing  sight  of  it."  I  am 
quite  sure  this  is  true,  as  any  one  may  see.  The 
worst  kind  of  sorrow  is  that  in  which  a  man  is  unable 
to  get  away  from  himself.  You  will  often  come 
across  people  who  are  so  completely  self-absorbed 
that  they  are  cruel  to  others  without  ever  dreaming 
that  it  is  so.  You  will  see  trouble  come  into  a  family, 
and  some  member  of  that  family  —  the  head  of  it, 
perhaps  —  instead  of  trying  to  lighten  the  load  for 


THE    VALLEY    OF    BACA  263 

the  rest  will  talk  as  if  he  had  to  bear  it  all.  It  is  his 
sensations,  his  woes,  his  aching  heart  that  are  occupy- 
ing his  attention  all  the  time.  His  valley  of  Baca 
is  dreary  enough,  but  he  makes  it  so  by  his  self- 
pity;  by  withholding  the  balm  of  healing  from  others 
he  fails  to  draw  upon  the  hidden  springs  of  comfort  and 
strength  which  wait  untouched  within  his  own  soul. 
On  the  other  hand,  how  beautiful  it  often  is  to 
see  a  group  of  mourners  drawn  together  by  a  com- 
mon sympathy  in  such  a  way  that  every  one  becomes 
stronger  and  holier  by  the  endeavour  to  minister 
to  the  good  of  the  rest.  Probably  there  is  nothing 
on  this  side  of  eternity  which  more  closely  resembles 
heaven  than  the  experience  in  which  two  or  more 
souls  become  one  in  the  brave  and  loyal  sharing 
of  a  common  sorrow.  Thus  Ellen  Thorneycroft 
Fowler  speaks  of  "those  sacred  seasons,  known  to 
most  of  us,  when  those  who  have  come  back  from  the 
gates  of  the  grave  combine  the  pathetic  sacredness 
of  the  dead  with  the  sweet  familiarity  of  the  living, 
and  we  feel  that  we  never  can  be  angry  with  their 
faults  or  irritated  by  their  follies  any  more."  A 
father  has  told  me  before  now  that  in  a  time  of 
terrible  misfortune  the  one  thing  that  sustained 
him  was  the  loyal  devotion  of  his  only  son.  It 
was,  he  declared,  almost  worth  while  going  through 
the  experience  because  of  the  way  in  which  it  drew 
forth  from  that  boy  the  wealth  of  tender  strength 
which  he  had  at  command,  but  which  had  never 
been   needed   before.     But   how  differently  people 


264  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

act  in  such  cases !  It  is  an  old  saying  that  when 
poverty  comes  in  at  the  door  love  flies  out  at  the 
window,  and  so  indeed  he  often  does.  Then  it  is 
that  the  valley  of  Baca  is  felt  to  be  hard  and  bare; 
there  is  no  love  to  draw  upon  the  Divine  springs 
which  lie  beneath  even  the  most  forbidding  of  earthly 
experiences.  How  sad  it  is  that  so  many  of  us  should 
deliberately  choose  the  baser  instead  of  the  better 
part,  and  should  be  content  to  make  life  a  weary 
pilgrimage  rather  than  a  gladsome  and  triumphal 
progress  from  strength  to  strength.  Deep  down 
beneath  our  feet  in  every  valley  of  pain  there  lie 
God's  springs  of  joy.  Faith  can  find  them,  and  love 
can  make  them  overflow.  If  any  of  you  who  are  now 
listening  to  me  are  in  danger  of  making  the  mistake 
I  have  just  indicated,  let  me  urge  you  to  take  care 
ere  it  be  too  late,  and  you  have  wasted  your  life  in 
needless  fretting  and  striving  against  what  ought 
never  to  have  existed.  Beyond  a  doubt  there  are 
plenty  of  people  here  who  are  wretched  because 
they  are  helping  to  keep  the  valley  of  Baca  dreary 
and  bare  in  their  own  home  and  their  own  heart. 
The  very  conditions  against  which  you  protest  so 
earnestly  represent  God's  call  to  you  to  do  something 
to  manifest  His  love.  The  grandest  antidote  for 
all  your  heart-burnings  is  to  set  to  work  to  make 
life  more  tolerable  for  those  about  you.  It  can 
hardly  be  otherwise  than  that,  if  you  do,  the  peace 
of  God  will  possess  your  own  soul,  and  the  joy  of 
the  Lord  shall  be  your  strength. 


THE   VALLEY   OF   BACA  265 

But  the  subject  takes  an  even  wider  range  when 
we  think  of  the  valley  of  Baca  as  the  world  —  I 
mean  the  world  as  it  appears  to  any  individual  man 
or  woman.  The  world  as  you  know  it  is  not  the 
world  as  I  know  it,  and  even  though  we  may  live 
in  the  very  same  place,  and  have  the  very  same 
people  to  deal  with,  our  outlook  upon  them  may 
be  different.  But  to  every  one  of  us  the  world  is 
the  world,  a  stage  on  the  road  from  one  unknown 
to  another.  Few  of  us  would  like  to  think  that  the 
world  to  come,  whatever  it  may  be,  will  be  on  the 
whole  a  sadder  or  darker  place  than  this;  this  is 
a  veritable  valley  of  Baca.  All  around  us  are  the 
sighs  and  groans  of  those  who  are  "weary  of  the 
greatness  of  the  way."  There  are  many  people 
who  are  tired  of  life,  tired  because  it  seems  so  aimless 
and  disappointing.  When  a  man  is  robbed  of  the 
incentive  to  strong  endeavour  he  is  sure  to  think 
of  the  world  as  a  valley  of  Baca :  before  him  stretches 
the  long  dusty  path  that  leads  through  the  desert 
in  the  pitiless  heat  until  it  vanishes  in  the  night  of 
death.  There  are  some  who  on  the  march  to  Zion, 
the  home  of  the  soul,  never  see  an  inch  beyond  the 
valley  of  Baca.  We  all  know  people  like  that,  peo- 
ple with  whom  life  is  over,  although  to  all  appear- 
ance it  has  many  years  to  run. 

And  then,  who  can  avoid  seeing  that  the  world 
is  a  valley  of  Baca,  a  place  of  weeping,  to  thousands 
with  whom  it  might  have  been  the  dwelling-place 
of  joy?     And  often  it  seems  such  a  little  thing  that 


266  NEW  THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

makes  the  difference.  In  this  respect  high  and  low, 
rich  and  poor,  are  far  nearer  together  than  they 
think.  As  a  Christian  minister  it  falls  to  my  lot 
to  meet  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and  I  have 
often  been  profoundly  impressed  by  the  fact  that 
external  conditions  have  almost  nothing  to  do  with 
a  man's  happiness  and  interest  in  life. 

How  small,  of  all  that  human  hearts  endure, 

That  part  which  laws  and  kings  can  cause  or  cure. 

Have  we  never  felt,  for  instance,  the  curious  sense 
of  unreality  that  comes  over  us  in  a  season  of  great 
distress  of  mind  when  we  look  forth  from  the  dark- 
ened chamber  of  our  heart  upon  the  busy,  noisy 
world  outside?  Perhaps  your  hearth  has  been 
left  unto  you  desolate,  and  yet  the  butcher  will  call 
for  orders,  you  will  hear  the  street  boys  calling  the 
latest  news  in  the  evening  papers,  you  will  hear  the 
happy  laughter  of  passers  by  on  their  way  to  some 
scene  of  excitement.  It  all  seems  so  remote,  so 
ghostly,  so  altogether  apart  from  what  you  are  and 
feel.  And  the  change  in  outlook  can  come  with 
appalling  suddenness  too.  All  in  a  moment  a  man 
may  be  struck  down  by  a  blow  from  which  he  never 
recovers.  Yesterday  your  world  was  like  some 
fruitful,  smiling  landscape ;  to-day  it  lies  before  you, 
a  valley  of  Baca,  a  place  of  deadness,  strewn  with 
the  ashes  of  ruined  hopes  as  though  from  some 
volcanic  eruption.  The  monarch  on  the  throne  is 
no  more  secure  from  such  a  visitation  than  the 
labourer  in  the  cottage. 


THE   VALLEY   OF    BACA  267 

But  yesterday  the  word  of  Caesar  might 

Have  stood  against  the  world;   now  Hes  he  there, 

And  none  so  poor  to  do  him  reverence. 

Ah  yes;  there  are  thousands  in  this  land  to-day 
whom  the  world  deems  fortunate,  but  whom  no 
one  need  envy.  What  seems  to  others  a  pathway 
strewn  with  roses  is  to  them  only  a  valley  of  Baca. 

Then  there  are  some  to  whom  life  has  never  been 
much  else  than  a  valley  of  Baca,  rough  and  stony, 
arid  and  bare.  Some  of  you,  I  dare  say,  have  known 
little  but  struggle  all  your  lives,  and  struggle  which 
has  brought  with  it  but  little  profit.  Every  time 
of  new  beginnings  has  been  but  a  fresh  acquaint- 
ance with  toil  and  disappointment.  Nothing  has 
ever  quite  succeeded.  No  sooner  have  you  gained 
the  hard-won  prize  of  effort  bravely  made  than  it 
has  been  wrested  from  you  by  circumstances  unfore- 
seen. The  future  has  always  been  mortgaged  to 
some  sinister  claim  or  other  which  you  can  neither 
repudiate  nor  satisfy.  I  might  go  on  multiplying 
examples  of  the  way  in  which  the  world  as  a  whole 
may  seem  a  valley  of  Baca  to  different  minds  for 
different  reasons,  but  what  I  really  want  to  point 
out  is  that  what  we  have  to  do  is  to  recognise  that 
whatever  belongs  to  one  belongs  to  all,  and  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  isolated  good  or  evil. 
Never  let  a  desolation  draw  you  away  from  mankind. 
That  chattering  world  that  seems  so  remote  is  not 
remote  at  all ;  it  is  so  near  as  actually  to  be  within 
your  own  heart.  Let  every  sharp  discipline  help 
to  open  the  well-springs  of  human  sympathy ;  never 


268  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

let  it  close  them.  So  shall  your  valley  of  Baca  be- 
come a  resting-place  for  other  weary  feet.  You 
need  ask  no  greater  destiny  than  to  know  that  the 
way  you  have  trodden  has  been  made  easier  for 
others  by  your  faithfulness  and  truth.  It  is  com- 
paratively seldom  that  one  finds  a  human  being 
whose  own  trials  have  become  sacraments  to  other 
people,  but  to  meet  such  is  a  benediction.  To  such 
people  every  deepening  of  experience  becomes  a 
means  of  refreshing  and  renewing  the  face  of  the 
world  for  fellow  pilgrims.  Wherever  they  tread 
flowers  spring  up,  hope  recovers,  and  faith  returns. 
Nor  does  the  effort  go  unrewarded.  It  was  this 
that  Jesus  meant  when  He  said:  "Give,  and  it 
shall  be  given  unto  you ;  good  measure,  pressed 
down,  and  shaken  together,  and  running  over,  shall 
men  give  into  your  bosom.  For  with  the  same 
measure  that  ye  mete  withal  it  shall  be  measured 
to  you  again."  This  is  a  law  of  the  Divine  life 
which  works  unerringly,  and  you  can  trust  it. 

And  if  in  thy  life  on  earth, 

In  the  chamber  or  by  the  hearth, 

'Mid  the  crowded  city's  tide, 

Or  high  on  the  lone  hillside; 

Thou  canst  cause  a  thought  of  peace, 

Or  an  aching  thought  to  cease, 

Or  a  gleam  of  joy  to  burst 

On  a  soul  in  sadness  nurst; 

Spare  not  thy  hand,  my  child: 

Though  the  gladdened  should  never  know 

The  well-spring  amid  the  wild, 

Whence  the  waters  of  blessing  flow. 


SWEETENING  THE  WATERS  OF 
MARAH 

"And  when  they  came  to  Marah,  they  could 
not  drink  of  the  waters  of  Marah,  for  they  were 
bitter:  therefore  the  name  of  it  was  called 
Marah.  And  the  people  murmured  against 
Moses,  saying.  What  shall  we  drink  ?  And  he 
cried  unto  the  Lord;  and  the  Lord  showed  him 
a  tree,  which  when  he  had  cast  into  the  waters,  the 
waters  were  made  sweet."  — Exodus  xv.  23-25. 

The  striking  miracle  recorded  in  these  words 
and  described  so  simply  and  tellingly  in  the  imme- 
diate context  has  given  rise  to  a  good  deal  of  specu- 
lation among  biblical  students  in  time  past.  It 
cannot  truthfully  be  said  that  we  know,  beyond 
all  possibility  of  doubt,  what  was  the  phenomenon 
thus  referred  to,  but  I  think  we  may  fairly  take 
for  granted  that  the  incident  itself  was  historical, 
not  merely  legendary.  In  saying  this,  I  am  aware 
that  I  have  against  me  not  merely  the  weighty  opin- 
ion of  some  Old  Testament  scholars,  but  also  the 
attitude  of  the  modern  scientific  mind.  Still,  some- 
how I  cannot  resist  the  impression  that  what  is 
here  described  actually  took  place.  You  know 
the  story.     The  Israelites  in  their  journey  across 

269 


270  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

the  Sinaitic  peninsula  came  to  a  district  where  the 
only  water  obtainable  was  so  bitter  as  to  be  unfit 
for  drinking  purposes.  They  complained  to  their 
great  leader,  who,  under  Divine  guidance,  discovered 
a  tree  which,  when  thrown  into  the  waters,  had  the 
power  of  removing  the  bitterness  and  rendering 
them  palatable.  Now  I  always  like  to  try  to  get 
beneath  a  statement  of  this  kind,  and  see,  if  I  can, 
what  it  arose  from.  Well,  to  begin  with,  it  seems 
to  be  a  fact  that  in  the  district  thus  indicated  there 
were  some  bitter  springs.  It  is  impossible  to  fix 
the  locality  with  precision,  but  the  Old  Testament 
is  not  our  only  evidence  as  to  the  existence  of  such 
springs.  They  can  be  found  to-day  in  various 
parts  of  the  world,  and,  as  you  know,  possess  me- 
dicinal properties  in  some  cases.  This  part  of  the 
story,  at  any  rate,  is  quite  believable.  A  similar 
story  is  recorded  concerning  the  march  of  Alexan- 
der the  Great. 

As  to  the  rest  of  the  narrative,  we  have  little  more 
than  conjecture  to  guide  us,  but  there  is  an  intrinsic 
probability  in  the  statement  that  Moses  was  able 
to  sweeten  the  water  by  throwing  into  it  certain 
vegetable  growths.  Properly  speaking,  this  was 
no  miracle  at  all,  but  the  application  of  knowledge 
gained  by  the  Israelitish  leader  during  his  long 
sojourn  in  Arabia.  The  same  might  be  said  of  any 
so-called  miracle ;  it  is  only  the  operation  of  Divine 
law  in  what  is  to  us  an  unaccustomed  way.  Things 
are  taking  place  around  us  every  day  of  our  lives 


SWEETENING   THE    WATERS    OF   MARAH        271 

which  would  have  seemed  stupendous  miracles  to 
our  forefathers,  but  which  to  us  are  the  veriest  com- 
monplaces. What  would  the  Israelites  have  thought 
of  the  motor-car,  the  telephone,  or  wireless  teleg- 
raphy ?  Any  chemist  can  turn  fluids  sweet  or  bitter, 
wholesome  or  unwholesome,  at  his  pleasure,  without 
changing  their  appearance  in  the  least.  I  say,  then, 
that  apparent  miracle  is  only  the  operation  of  Divine 
law  in  a  way  to  which  we  have  not  hitherto  been 
accustomed.  No  doubt  it  was  so  in  the  sweetening 
of  the  waters  of  Marah.  To  Moses  it  would  not 
seem  the  miracle  that  it  seemed  to  his  simple  fol- 
lowers. 

But  then  this  was  not  the  whole  of  the  matter. 
Moses  did  depend  upon  Divine  wisdom  and  power 
at  every  step  of  his  wonderful  march,  and  his  faith 
justified  itself  by  results.  There  is  a  beautiful 
touch  introduced  here  in  this  ancient  narrative  — 
one  of  the  earliest  in  Old  Testament  literature,  by 
the  way  —  which  shows  that  this  was  the  view 
which  Moses  took  of  the  matter.  We  are  told  in 
the  verses  which  immediately  follow  our  text  that 
this  true  father  of  his  people  tried  to  teach  the 
Israelites  the  value  of  sweet  and  quiet  dependence 
upon  God.  "There  he  [that  is,  Moses]  made  for 
them  a  statute  and  an  ordinance,  and  there  he  proved 
them,  and  said.  If  thou  wilt  diligently  hearken  to 
the  voice  of  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  wilt  do  that 
which  is  right  in  His  sight,  and  wilt  give  ear  to  His 
commandments,  and  keep  all  His  statutes,  I  will 


272  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

put  none  of  the  diseases  upon  thee  which  I  have 
brought  upon  the  Egyptians :  for  I  am  the  Lord 
that  healeth  thee."  There  is  something  very  tender 
and  helpful  about  this  spiritual  application  of  the 
incident  of  the  sweetening  of  the  waters  of  Marah. 
I  like  to  think  that  it  is  a  genuine  tradition,  and 
represents  what  a  great  and  good  man  such  as  Moses 
would  wish  to  say  about  such  a  remarkable  incident. 
"I  am  the  Lord  that  healeth  thee,"  was  the  spiritual 
explanation  of  a  material  benefit. 

I  have  chosen  this  text  this  evening  because  of  a 
desire  of  which  I  have  long  been  conscious  to  press 
upon  your  attention  the  truth  that  God  does  operate 
in  wonderful  ways  through  every  spiritual  experi- 
ence in  the  sweetening  of  the  waters  of  bitterness 
if  we  will  only  let  Him  do  it.  The  longer  I  live 
the  more  I  become  convinced  that  there  is  no  limit 
to  the  gracious  dealings  of  God  with  any  soul  that 
trusts  Him.  The  greater  our  demand  upon  His 
bounty,  the  greater  the  response.  "God  is  a  very 
present  help  in  time  of  trouble."  Life  is  one 
long  miracle  to  the  child  of  God.  Everything  is 
made  to  contribute  to  the  upbuilding  of  the  soul  if 
we  only  expect  it.  It  is  foolish  to  think  that  we  are 
meant  to  go  on  drinking  the  waters  of  bitterness 
when  they  might  become  the  gushing  fountains  of 
eternal  life.  It  is  difficult  to  know  how  to  put  the 
case  strongly  enough,  but  suppose  we  try  to  do  it 
this  way :  God  is  eternal  life,  love,  and  joy.  These 
things  are  the  heritage  of  His  people,  and  we  ought 


SWEETENING    THE   WATERS    OF    MARAH        273 

to  claim  them.  There  is  no  reason  why  our  earthly 
experience  should  be  one  of  sorrow  and  dread  and 
bitterness  of  spirit.  To  live  in  this  way  is  an  entire 
mistake,  but  it  is  one  that  a  good  many  of  us  are 
making. 

Take  the  average  business  man  in  this  assembly. 
I  dare  say  you  have  a  great  deal  to  try  you  in  the 
ordinary  affairs  of  life,  and  the  more  sensitively 
you  happen  to  be  organised  the  greater  will  be  your 
reaction  to  the  stimulus  of  pain.  Some  of  you 
hardly  ever  know  anything  else  than  worry  and 
disturbance  of  mind.  Things  are  always  wrong 
at  the  office,  and  worse  perhaps  at  home.  Maybe 
you  hate  your  occupation,  and  wish  you  could 
get  away  from  it.  Or  you  would  like  to  exchange 
with  some  one  else,  or  come  into  possession  of  just 
that  one  thing  more  which  would  deliver  you  from 
your  present  difficulties  and  dangers.  There  is 
always  some  kind  of  a  shadow  on  your  horizon, 
something  to  be  afraid  of,  something  to  cause  sad- 
ness and  disappointment.  Sometimes  you  wish 
you  had  your  neighbour's  equable  frame  of  mind, 
and  could  take  life  as  easily  as  he  does;  but  then 
perhaps  this  equableness  of  his  is  conjoined  to  a 
nature  that  is  content  with  the  flesh-pots  of  Egypt 
and  never  wants  to  go  in  search  of  any  promised 
land.  A  bookmaker  on  the  turf  may  find  life  very 
interesting  from  his  point  of  view,  and  not  at  all 
unprofitable ;  he  may  be  very  good-natured  in  his 
way,   and  regard   the  world   as   quite   a  desirable 


274  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

place  to  live  in.  He  does  not  trouble  his  head 
about  the  ultimate  problems  of  existence,  and  I 
dare  say  he  wonders  why  on  earth  any  one  else 
ever  should.  How  different  from  the  conscientious, 
irritable,  chronically  anxious  man  of  ideals  who 
wants  to  do  the  best  he  can  with  the  present  for  the 
sake  of  that  deeper  meaning  which  he  believes 
underlies  all  the  perplexing  experiences  which  go 
to  make  up  life !  I  take  it  that  a  good  many  of 
you  belong  to  this  latter  class.  You  desire  to  take 
life  seriously,  but  you  find  it  no  easy  thing  to  do  so 
and  retain  your  sweetness  of  spirit.  What  a  num- 
ber of  you,  even  in  the  discharge  of  the  ordinary 
duties  of  the  ordinary  day,  are  drinking  continually 
of  the  waters  of  Marah  ! 

Then,  too,  there  are,  to  be  sure,  the  tragedies  of 
life  in  which  we  are  all  sooner  or  later  called  to  share. 
No  doubt  some  of  you  are  passing  through  yours 
just  now,  and  life  is  very  bitter  in  consequence. 
You  may  have  been  the  victim  of  a  great  betrayal 
or  some  irretrievable  loss  that  has  left  the  soul  poor 
and  dark.  Even  some  of  the  strongest  characters  of 
earth  have  occasionally  to  encounter  circumstances 
which  would  try  the  strongest  nerve  or  break  the 
stoutest  heart.  The  deeper  the  nature  the  greater 
its  capacity  for  pain.  It  needs  some  measure  of 
moral  greatness  before  a  soul  can  suffer  greatly.  It 
may  well  be,  therefore,  that  there  are  some  now 
listening  to  me  who  are  so  constituted  as  to  feel 
deeply  what  to  a  shallower  soul  would  be  no  afffic- 


SWEETENING    THE    WATERS    OF    MARAH        275 

tion  at  all.  "The  heart  knoweth  its  own  bitterness." 
The  more  strongly  you  feel  the  grandeur  and  solem- 
nity of  life,  the  more  you  must  necessarily  feel  the 
ruin  of  exalted  hopes  and  aims,  if  such  has  been 
your  lot.  Many  of  you  are  like  pilgrims  in  the 
wilderness  of  Sinai.  Long  ago  you  left  behind  you 
the  life  of  bondage  to  low  ideals  and  material  inter- 
ests. You  set  your  face  towards  wider  experiences 
and  nobler  realities,  and  journeyed  on  in  the  expec- 
tation of  reaching  something,  but  you  seem  as  far 
off  from  it  as  ever. 

You  will  admit  that  this  is  more  or  less  the  way 
in  which  the  average  man  lives  his  life  in  these  busy 
days  of  ours.  Perhaps,  to  be  more  accurate,  I 
ought  to  say  the  average  man  who  takes  life  seri- 
ously and  recognises  that  it  means  more  than  eat- 
ing, drinking,  sleeping,  getting  money,  and  enjoying 
yourself. 

But  in  the  nature  of  things  is  there  any  inherent 
necessity  why  life  should  be  lived  in  this  way?  Is 
it  true,  as  is  so  generally  taken  for  granted,  that  this 
world  is  a  vale  of  tears,  and  that,  do  what  we  will, 
we  must  expect  to  live  under  the  shadow  of  sorrow 
during  the  greater  part  of  our  earthly  career?  I 
do  not  believe  it,  and  yet  I  hope  I  do  not  take  a 
very  superficial  view  of  life.  A  cowardly  avoidance 
of  the  bitter  things  of  life  is  one  thing,  a  weak  sub- 
mission to  them  is  quite  another.  I  believe  God 
has  meant  us  to  taste  of  the  waters  of  Marah,  but 
I  am  equally  sure  that  He  did  not  mean  us  to  go  on 


276  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

drinking  them.  It  is  a  pitiful  thing  that  so  many 
thousands  of  good,  well-meaning  men  and  women 
are  allowing  their  moral  energies  to  lie  unused  to-day 
because  they  do  not  know,  or  do  not  seem  to  know, 
that  God's  will  for  them  is  not  sorrow  but  joy,  not 
pain  but  peace,  not  weakness  but  strength.  You 
will  sometimes  hear  good  people  speaking  as  though 
trouble  and  distress  of  mind  were  a  good  thing  sent 
by  God  as  a  means  of  blessing,  although  we  may 
not  be  able  to  see  it.  There  is  of  course  a  sense  in 
which  this  is  quite  true,  but  the  statement  ought 
not  to  be  accepted  without  the  most  careful  quali- 
fication. Pain  in  itself  is  not  a  good,  but  an  evil; 
at  the  best  it  is  only  a  call  towards  a  good.  I  am 
quite  convinced  that  the  attitude  of  the  average 
Christian  towards  the  ills  of  life,  in  theory  at  any 
rate,  is  a  mistaken  one.  It  is  not  our  duty  to  submit 
to  pain  or  to  suppose  that  it  necessarily  represents 
the  will  of  God  for  us.  If  people  choose  to  live  in 
a  pestilential  atmosphere  they  are  sure  to  suffer 
for  it,  but  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  call  this 
suffering  the  will  of  God ;  it  is  only  the  will  of  God 
in  the  sense  that  He  desires  us  to  overcome  the  evil. 
After  all,  pain  is  disharmony;  it  shows  that  some- 
thing needs  adjusting  in  the  experience  of  the  soul. 
It  is  Divine  life  trying  to  get  through,  and  we  ought 
to  see  that  it  does  get  through.  Never  lie  down 
before  an  evil,  or  believe  that  it  is  God's  will  that 
the  light  of  your  hope  should  be  extinguished  in  the 
waters  of  affliction.     Take  it  for  granted  that  when 


SWEETENING   THE   WATERS    OF   MARAH        277 

suffering  arrives  on  the  scene  the  love  of  God  is 
calling  you  to  rise  to  some  higher  plane  of  experi- 
ence. Treat  the  suffering  as  an  enemy  and  assail 
it  as  from  the  side  of  God.  Suffering  can  only  be 
called  your  friend  when  it  calls  forth  from  you  the 
latent  resources  of  your  being.  It  is  your  friend 
in  the  same  sense  that  anything  is  your  friend  which 
drives  you  from  lesser  into  larger  life. 

I  would  say,  therefore,  to  any  one  in  this  place  to 
whom   trouble   has   come:    Do   not   believe   for  a 
moment  that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  you  should 
be  crushed  by  that  trouble.     There  is  always  some- 
thing that  will  sweeten  the  waters  of  Marah,  and 
the  prayer  of  simple  faith  will  lead  you  to  it.     It  is 
a  great  gain  to  be  able  to  recognise  that  this  remedy 
exists  and  that  you  can  find  it.     Life  is  hard  for 
most  of  you,  I  am  sure ;   you  cannot  afford  to  take 
it  lightly;    but  if  you  can  understand,  like  Moses 
the  man  of  God,  that  Divine  wisdom  and  love  are 
directing  you  in  all  your  pilgrimage,  you  will  find 
that  you  are  equal  to  every  emergency  as  it  arises. 
Get  hold  of  this  one  thought:    that  God  does  not 
mean  you  to  be  weakened  and  impoverished  by  any 
affliction,  however  great ;   His  desire  for  you  is  that 
you  should  live  in  the  fellowship  of  holy  love  and 
joy.     Pain  should  never  be  regarded  as  anything 
other  than  the  stimulus  to  fuller  exertion  and  higher 
reaches  of  attainment. 

Supposing,  then,  that  I  am  addressing  some  young 
fellow    who    feels    grievously    discouraged    by    his 


278  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

present  experience  of  life  and  finds  himself  in  de- 
sponding mood,  I  would  say :  My  dear  lad,  you 
neither  know  yourself  nor  God.  What  do  you 
think  Moses  would  have  done  in  your  place  ?  What 
do  you  suppose  Jesus  would  do?  Think  of  the 
noblest  man  you  ever  knew,  and  ask  whether  he 
could  be  broken  or  defeated  by  the  events  which 
have  mastered  you.  You  are  like  those  mariners 
who,  perishing  of  thirst  and  signalling  for  water  to 
a  passing  ship,  received  the  answer,  "Let  down 
your  buckets  and  drink;  you  are  in  the  Amazon." 
You  carry  within  you  all  that  is  required  to  render 
you  master  of  your  fate.  Believe  that  God  is  seek- 
ing to  bless  the  world  through  you,  and  that  He  will 
do  it.  Remember  that  He  dwells  within  you  now, 
and  that  His  life  is  the  source  and  sustenance  of 
your  being.  Believe  that  what  has  ever  been  pos- 
sible to  any  child  of  God  in  the  conflict  with  evil  is 
possible  to  you.  Cease  to  dwell  upon  the  bitterness 
of  your  lot,  and  turn  with  quiet  confidence  to  the 
love  which  is  the  fundamental  reality  of  all  existence. 
"Rest  in  the  Lord,  wait  patiently  for  Him,  and  He 
shall  give  thee  the  desires  of  thine  heart." 

We  have  all  observed  from  time  to  time  that  the 
real  difi"erence  between  man  and  man  in  this  world 
consists  not  so  much  in  their  circumstances  as  in 
themselves.  One  man  has  a  quiet  inner  conscious- 
ness of  power,  and  all  doors  fly  open  at  his  touch; 
another  trembles  at  every  shadow,  and  accomplishes 
nothing.     One  is  cheerful  and   strong  in  the  face 


SWEETENING  THE  WATERS  OF  MARAH    279 

of  adversity ;  another  is  so  weakened  by  the  chill 
blasts  of  misfortune  that  he  becomes  unequal  to 
the  struggle  of  life.  Nothing  is  more  common  than 
to  see  one  man  lose  heart  under  what  to  another 
would  only  have  been  a  spur  to  further  effort.  Un- 
questionably too  it  is  the  man  of  faith  who  does 
things  —  and  I  use  the  word  in  its  widest  sense. 
One  simple  child  of  God  like  George  Muller  will 
do  more  for  his  generation  than  a  thousand  well- 
endowed  people  of  apparently  larger  opportunities, 
but  who  live  their  lives  on  a  lower  plane.  To  such 
a  man  as  George  Muller  the  earth  is  the  Lord's  and 
the  fulness  thereof,  and  every  event  has  a  Divine 
meaning.  It  was  said  of  the  late  Mr.  Spurgeon 
that  he  looked  upon  every  tiny  flower  as  a  direct 
creative  act  of  God,  as  indeed  it  is;  it  does  not 
weaken  this  belief  in  the  least  to  recognise  that 

All's  love,  yet  all's  law. 

A  friend  of  mine,  an  Anglican  clergyman,  told  me 
the  other  day  of  a  peculiar  experience  of  his  own 
which  taught  him  a  beautiful  lesson.  He  was 
kneeling  in  the  chancel  of  his  church,  gazing  upon 
the  form  of  the  Christ  in  the  stained  glass  window 
behind  the  altar,  when  all  at  once  he  seemed  to  see 
the  figure  raise  its  hand  as  if  to  summon  him  to 
approach.  At  first  he  thought  his  senses  must  have 
deceived  him,  but  the  movement  was  repeated,  and 
this  time  he  saw  that  it  was  an  appearance  caused 
by  the  gentle  tossing  of  the  branch  of  a  tree  outside 


28o  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

the  window,  which  made  it  seem  as  though  the  Christ 
in  the  picture  were  actuaUy  ahve  and  caUing  to  His 
worshipper.  My  friend  was  so  impressed  by  the 
suggestiveness  of  the  incident  that  he  wrote  the 
following  lines  and  sent  them  to  me : 

Subdued  by  mystic  glamour  of  the  scene 
And  loth  to  let  the  bright  illusion  go, 

I  pondered  thankfully  how  it  might  mean 
That  all  the  fair  created  things  we  know, 

Common  as  wind  and  sunshine,  none  the  less 

Reveal  the  moving  of  Christ's  Hand  to  bless. 

The  healthful  hfe  on  mountain,  moor,  and  sea, 
All  toil  or  joy  where  useful  deeds  are  done, 

In  spheres  immense  of  man's  activity  — 
These  are  not  Christless ;  all  true  life  is  one. 

Disclosing  still,  for  hearts  that  understand. 

Blessings  and  beckonings  of  that  mighty  Hand. 

How  absolutely  true !  There  is  nothing  insig- 
nificant in  life,  nothing  that  does  not  belong  to  God. 
Instead  of  kneeling  by  the  waters  of  affliction  in 
useless  lament,  rise  and  watch  for  the  beckoning 
hand  which  will  guide  you  to  what  can  sweeten 
them.  Your  problem,  whatever  it  is,  is  God's  too. 
"When  He  giveth  quietness  who  then  can  make 
trouble?"  "Is  anything  too  hard  for  the  Lord?" 
"Behold,  the  Lord's  arm  is  not  shortened  that  it 
cannot  save,  neither  His  ear  heavy  that  it  cannot 
hear." 


BELIEVING   PRAYER 

"  All  things  whatsoever  ye  shall  ask  in  prayer, 
believing,  ye  shall  receive."  —  Matthew  xxi.  22. 

This  emphatic  saying  of  Jesus  appears  in  a 
rather  strange  setting.  It  forms  the  concluding 
verse  in  Matthew's  account  of  the  cursing  of  the 
barren  fig  tree,  a  story  which  is  told  with  greater 
fulness  of  detail  in  Mark's  version.  According  to 
Mark,  Jesus,  on  His  way  from  Bethany  to  Jeru- 
salem, approached  a  certain  fig  tree  in  the  hope  of 
finding  some  fruit  to  satisfy  His  hunger,  but  was 
disappointed,  whereupon  He  exclaimed,  "No  man 
eat  fruit  of  thee  hereafter  for  ever."  Mark  then 
goes  on  to  tell  the  story  of  the  day's  doings.  This 
was  the  day  on  which  Jesus  cleansed  the  Temple 
from  the  money-changers  and  victim  sellers.  After 
this  trying  and  exciting  experience,  Jesus  returned 
to  Bethany  for  the  night,  and,  so  Mark  tells  us, 
took  His  way  to  Jerusalem  again  the  next  morning. 
When  the  little  party  passed  the  fig  tree  to  which 
He  had  directed  attention  on  the  previous  day,  the 
disciples  found  that  it  was  withered  up  from  the 
roots.  Peter,  surprised  at  this,  commented  upon 
it,  and  Jesus  in  response  went  on  to  bid  him  have 
faith  in  God,  and  to  declare  that  such  faith  would 

281 


282  NEW    THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

move  mountains.  He  concluded  His  address  by 
saying:  "All  things  whatsoever  ye  pray  and  ask 
for,  believe  that  ye  have  received  them,  and  ye  shall 
have  them." 

This  is  a  completer  version  of  the  circumstances 
under  which  the  words  of  our  text  came  to  be  spoken 
than  Matthew's  is,  and  throws  a  considerable  light 
upon  them.  Evidently  Matthew's  version  is  not 
an  exact  copy  of  Mark's,  although  in  substance  the 
same,  a  fact  which  goes  far  to  establish  the  utter- 
ance as  being  authentic.  Where  Matthew  has,  "All 
things  whatsoever  ye  shall  ask  in  prayer,  believing 
ye  shall  receive,"  Mark  has,  "Believe  that  ye  have 
received  them,  and  ye  shall  have  them."  Mark's 
version  of  the  saying  is  even  more  striking  and 
emphatic  than  Matthew's,  but  either  of  them  is 
remarkable.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  they 
differ  so  widely  in  form,  they  mean  much  the  same 
thing,  and  therefore  it  is  evident  that  what  Jesus 
said  impressed  His  hearers  so  deeply  that  they 
remembered  it  perfectly,  although  perhaps  they  did 
not  preserve  the  actual  words.  Admitting,  then, 
that  we  have  here  a  genuine  saying  of  Jesus, 
what  can  it  possibly  mean?  Is  it  actually  true  that 
the  things  we  ask  for  in  perfect  faith  come  to  us 
with  unerring  certainty?  I  think  there  are  a  good 
many  of  us  who  would  hesitate  before  giving  an 
unqualified  affirmative  to  that  question. 

The  circumstances  under  which  the  words  were 
spoken  give  the  clue  to  their  meaning.     Let  us  look 


BELIEVING   PRAYER  283 

at  them  a  little  more  closely.  Do  you  really  believe, 
any  of  you,  that  Jesus  was  so  unreasonable  as  to 
curse  a  tree  because  He  expected  to  find  fruit  on  it 
and  was  disappointed?  Mark  expressly  tells  us 
that  the  time  of  figs  was  not  yet ;  so,  even  if  the  tree 
were  endowed  with  consciousness  and  a  sense  of 
moral  responsibility,  it  could  not  be  held  blame- 
worthy for  bearing  leaves  instead  of  fruit.  It  is 
childish  to  suppose  that  Jesus  blighted  it  because 
He  was  angry  with  it.  My  belief  is  that  we  have 
here  an  acted  parable,  but  probably  not  a  miracle. 
There  is  a  fig  tree  in  my  garden,  and  I  notice  that 
every  year  the  fruit  precedes  the  leaves.  At  the 
present  moment  not  a  leaf  is  visible,  but  the  fruit 
is  already  forming.  The  function  of  the  leaves  is 
to  protect  and  shelter  the  ripening  fruit.  When 
Jesus  saw  leaves  on  the  barren  fig  tree  He  knew 
that  the  fruit  ought  already  to  be  there,  even  though 
it  was  too  early  to  expect  that  it  should  be  ripe. 
When  He  found  none  He  saw  at  once  what  was 
the  matter :  the  tree  was  rotten  and  dying.  Hence 
His  words  were  not  so  much  a  curse  as  a  prophecy : 
No  man  eat  fruit  of  thee  hereafter  for  ever.  The 
next  morning  the  prophecy  was  found  to  be  ful- 
filled. I  have  seen  a  similar  thing  happen  in  an 
hour  on  a  hot  summer's  day  to  a  bush  that  had  not 
sufficient  stamina  to  carry  its  burden  of  luxuriance. 
But  was  there  not  something  else  in  the  mind 
of  Jesus  as  He  looked  upon  this  dying  tree,  and  is 
not  that  something  else  the  reason  why  Mark  inserts 


284  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

the  Story  of  the  cleansing  of  the  Temple  before  he 
finishes  his  account  of  the  fate  of  the  barren  fig  tree  ? 
I  think  Jesus  saw  in  this  incident  a  figure  of  the 
impending  doom  of  His  country  and  her  religion. 
The  Jewish  nation  was  like  the  barren  fig  tree.  It 
had  produced  ordinances  and  ceremonies  of  the 
most  elaborate  character.  Never  were  the  externals 
of  religion  better  attended  to  than  at  the  time  when 
priests  and  Pharisees  crucified  Jesus.  But  these 
were  nothing  but  leaves.  The  Temple  ought  to 
have  been  the  shelter  of  the  ripening  fruit  of  noble 
and  exalted  spiritual  experience,  but  that  fruit  was 
absent.  Jesus  realised  this  with  bitter  sorrow,  and 
saw  in  the  dying  fig  tree  an  emblem  of  it  all. 

But  He  also  saw  something  more.  He  saw  that 
at  the  darkest  and  the  worst  God  could  and  would 
provide  Himself  with  suitable  instruments  for  the 
realisation  of  His  holy  will.  So  as  Jesus  watched 
the  star  of  Israel  setting  in  darkness  and  material- 
ism, He  turned  with  quiet  hope  and  confidence  to 
the  simple  men  beside  Him.  Here  was  the  new 
Israel,  the  spiritual  Israel  who  should  bring  man- 
kind to  God.  Now  as  always,  God  had  chosen 
the  weak  things  of  the  earth  to  confound  the  mighty. 
Hence  his  exhortation  to  Peter  and  his  companions 
was  in  substance  something  like  this :  The  work 
of  Israel  is  over ;  she  is  like  the  barren  fig  tree ;  she 
is  perishing  for  lack  of  moral  power.  God  is  now 
calling  you  to  do  the  work  which  she  ought  to  have 
done  and  to  witness  Him  to  the  world.     "Fear  not, 


BELIEVING   PRAYER  285 

little  flock ;  it  is  your  Father's  good  pleasure  to  give 
you  the  kingdom."  Be  brave  and  strong.  Have 
faith  in  God  for  everything.  Give  your  lives  up  to 
Him  to  be  used  for  this  holy  work,  and  believe  that 
all  you  need  in  doing  it  will  be  supplied  if  you  ask 
for  it.  "Whatsoever  ye  shall  ask  in  prayer,  be- 
lieving ye  shall  receive." 

From  this  examination  of  the  subject  it  becomes 
evident  that  Jesus  was  not  speaking  vaguely  of  any 
kind  of  prayer  prayed  by  any  kind  of  man.  He 
meant  specially  and  definitely  the  prayer  of  the  man 
whose  whole  life  was  dedicated  to  God  and  whose 
vocation  it  was  to  help  to  realise  the  kingdom  of 
love.  You  may  say  at  once  that  this  ought  to  in- 
clude all  men,  and  so  indeed  it  ought,  but  it  does 
not.  Very  few  people  are  found  willing  to  make 
themselves  living  sacrifices  to  the  will  of  God  and 
the  good  of  man.  It  is  only  here  and  there  that 
some  individual  stands  out  who  is  willing  to  make 
the  whole-hearted  offering  of  himself  to  this  ideal. 
Then,  again,  the  ideal  shapes  itself  differently  to 
one  man  as  compared  with  the  way  in  w^hich  it 
presents  itself  to  another,  and  this  difference  con- 
stitutes the  individual  vocation.  It  was  Luther's 
vocation  to  rouse  the  slumbering  conscience  of 
Europe  against  the  immoral  practices  of  ecclesi- 
astical Rome.  It  was  Abraham  Lincoln's  vocation 
to  proclaim  liberty  to  a  subject  race  on  the  American 
continent.  It  was  John  Bright's  vocation  to  de- 
mand for  the  starving  poor  in  England  the  bread 


286  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

which  was  being  held  away  from  them  by  specially 
imposed  restrictions.  But  the  point  is  that  in  every 
such  case  the  conviction  that  one  is  called  to  do  a 
certain  work  for  God  carries  with  it  the  promise 
that  everything  necessary  for  the  doing  of  that 
work  will  be  supplied  from  the  illimitable  stores  of 
the  all-Father  at  the  call  of  His  servant.  This  was 
just  the  position  in  which  Peter  and  his  companions 
stood  at  the  time  when  Jesus  made  this  impressive 
promise.  There  were  only  eleven  of  them  all  told, 
if  we  leave  Judas  out  of  count,  and  yet  these  eleven 
were  the  new  Israel  which  was  to  spread  the  glad 
tidings  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  This  was  their 
task,  and  we  know  how  they  accomplished  it.  It 
is  because  of  their  faithful  witness,  unselfish  zeal, 
and  noble  sufferings  that  we  are  here  to-day.  But 
when  they  started,  the  disparity  between  their  ap- 
parent resources  and  the  work  to  be  accomplished 
must  have  seemed  absolutely  ridiculous.  Here 
were  they,  eleven  unlearned  Galilean  peasants, 
against  the  world.  Who  would  take  any  notice 
of  them?  Who  were  they  to  speak  in  the  name  of 
truth  and  righteousness?  Principalities  and  powers 
were  not  as  yet  arrayed  against  them,  for  they  did 
not  even  know  of  their  existence.  But  they  believed 
their  Master,  and  they  could  see  that  He  was  right. 
The  soul  had  fled  from  Israel.  For  long  she  had 
been  producing  nothing  but  leaves,  and  now  the 
ancient  tree  was  dying,  rotten  to  the  core.  Where 
was  God  to  be  found  if  not  with  Jesus?    When 


BELIEVING   PRAYER  287 

therefore  Jesus  told  them  that  they  must  take  up 
Israel's  work,  they  accepted  the  commission  in  the 
confidence  that  God  was  with  them.  What  they 
had  now  to  do  was  to  look  to  Him  as  to  a  never- 
failing  friend  for  all  that  they  might  need  in  the  dis- 
charge of  the  arduous  task  which  had  been  put 
upon  them. 

This  was  the  way  in  which  they  understood  the 
promise  as  Jesus  made  it,  and  the  circumstances 
attending  it  must  have  served  to  make  it  very  impres- 
sive. Viewed  from  this  standpoint,  it  becomes  not 
only  reasonable,  but  a  matter  which  has  been  tested 
over  and  over  again  and  abundantly  verified  by 
experience.  I  do  not  shrink  from  asserting  without 
shadow  of  hesitation  that  this  promise  is  being  ful- 
filled in  the  world  to-day  in  exactly  the  same  way 
as  it  was  fulfilled  in  the  experience  of  Peter,  James, 
and  John.  Can  any  one  explain  the  life  of  George 
Miiller?  A  good  many  people  have  tried  to  do 
so  by  appealing  to  the  phenomena  of  telepathy, 
the  force  of  a  concentrated  will,  and  such  like ;  but 
the  only  rational  explanation  is  that  here  was  a 
man  with  a  vocation,  and  he  looked  to  God  con- 
tinually for  the  power  to  fulfil  it.  Can  any  man 
explain  John  Wesley?  Every  opprobrious  epithet 
that  could  be  applied  to  a  human  being  was  flung 
at  him  during  the  time  when  he  was  doing  his  noblest 
work  for  God.  If  he  had  been  a  devil  incarnate, 
intent  only  upon  doing  all  the  harm  in  his  power 
to  poor  human  kind,  he  could  not  have  been  treated 


288  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

worse.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  devil  incarnate  is 
not  usually  treated  very  badly  at  all.  It  is  a  strange 
law  of  human  nature  that  the  man  who  does  his 
best  for  the  world  should  be  treated  as  though  he 
were  its  enemy,  to  be  crushed  at  any  cost,  but  so 
it  generally  is.  But  the  most  remarkable  thing 
about  Wesley  was  his  calm  confidence  in  God.  He 
applied  it  to  all  circumstances,  small  and  great. 
On  one  occasion  a  mob  dragged  him  about  all  night 
long  in  order  to  find  some  satisfactory  means  of 
putting  him  to  death  with  ignominy.  In  the  morn- 
ing they  let  him  go  because  they  were  getting  afraid 
of  him.  He  had  shown  no  trace  of  fear,  not  even 
of  excitement.  He  was  just  as  quiet  in  their  brutal 
hands  as  though  he  had  been  alone  with  his  heavenly 
Father.  They  had  never  seen  a  man  like  this  before, 
and  so  they  thought  it  best  to  let  him  alone.  Is 
there  any  explanation  of  this  other  than  that  the 
promise  of  our  text  was  fulfilled  in  the  experience 
of  one  more  servant  of  the  living  God? 

I  want  you  to  see  that  there  is  a  spiritual  law 
here  which  works  with  unerring  precision.  Granted 
that  you  have  God's  work  to  do,  and  are  utterly 
unselfish  about  it;  granted  that  your  self-interest 
has  become  swallowed  up  in  your  vocation,  and  you 
have  no  personal  ends  to  serve,  how  can  your  prayer 
for  Divine  assistance  ever  fail?  Why,  your  whole 
life  is  a  prayer.  What  you  want  is  precisely  what 
God  wants,  and  your  prayer  is  a  means  of  giving 
Him  His  opportunity  through  you.     People  have 


BELIEVING   PRAYER  289 

such  strange  ideas  about  prayer.  The  ordinary 
man  who  believes  or  disbelieves  in  the  efficacy  of 
prayer  does  so  on  the  ground  that  it  is  supposed 
to  persuade  God  to  do  something  which  otherwise 
He  would  not  have  been  willing  to  do.  The  man 
who  believes  in  prayer  appeals  to  his  experience  as 
a  proof  of  the  fact  that  God  does  listen  to  and  honour 
the  requests  of  His  children,  while  the  man  who 
disbelieves  in  it  points  out  that  thousands  of  agonis- 
ing prayers  have  seemed  to  go  unheeded.  Both 
are  right  in  the  appeal  to  experience,  but  neither 
of  them  realises  the  full  truth  about  the  subject. 
If  God  is  all-wise  as  well  as  benevolent,  it  is  foolish 
and  dangerous  to  expect  that  a  finite  mind  can  or 
ought  to  change  His  purposes.  Perfect  wisdom  is 
more  reliable  than  yours,  and  perfect  love  is  always 
sure  to  do  the  best  that  can  be  done.  Grasp  this 
truth  clearly  before  we  go  any  farther.  Prayer 
cannot  change  God,  and  ought  not  to  change  Him, 
for  it  is  impossible  to  improve  on  what  He  already 
desires  for  humanity. 

But  then,  some  one  will  exclaim,  it  is  no  use  pray- 
ing. All  we  have  to  do  is  to  leave  things  to  God 
without  concerning  ourselves  about  what  happens. 
Not  so  fast.  On  the  contrary,  if  you  once  realise 
clearly  that  it  is  impossible  to  improve  on  what  God 
already  means  for  you,  you  will  pray  harder  than 
ever,  and  you  will  have  a  full  and  unshaken  con- 
fidence that  your  prayers  are  certain  to  be  answered. 
Praying  is  the  most  important  thing  you  can  do. 


290  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

The  success  of  all  your  efforts  for  good  depends  upon 
your  power  in  prayer.  Let  me  show  you  what  I 
mean.  During  last  summer  not  a  few  of  the  smaller 
towns  of  this  country  were  in  danger  of  a  water 
famine  because  of  the  defectiveness  of  their  arrange- 
ments for  a  proper  supply.  Wells  ran  dry  and  tanks 
were  soon  exhausted.  In  more  than  one  such  case 
measures  had  to  be  promptly  taken  to  convey  the 
water  from  some  natural  reservoir  at  a  distance  and 
apply  it  to  the  immediate  needs  of  the  thirsty  towns- 
people. I  saw  one  lowland  town  in  Scotland  which 
had  thus  been  supplied  from  a  highland  loch.  But 
that  water  had  been  there  long  before  the  town  itself 
was;  it  had  been  there  for  ages,  a  practically  inex- 
haustible source  of  supply.  It  only  needed  to  be 
drawn  upon,  and  was  always  ready  to  flow  in  obedi- 
ence to  its  own  law  if  opportunity  had  been  given 
to  it.  Here  were  the  inhabitants  of  a  township 
suffering  for  want  of  what  actually  existed  long 
before  they  did.  Nothing  could  be  done  without 
water;  with  it  all  other  activities  became  possible. 
Here  is  a  figure  of  the  spiritual  life.  We  are  here 
to  express  God,  to  do  His  will.  He  is  ever  waiting 
to  refresh  the  world  with  love,  power,  and  joy.  All 
history  represents  the  incoming  of  God  to  the  life 
of  the  world.  Wherever  He  finds  opportunity  He 
will,  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  His  own  being, 
give  and  do  the  best.  That  best  already  exists  for 
every  one  of  us,  and  always  has  existed ;  it  is  eternal. 
You  cannot  so  much  as  imagine  a  want  which  is 


BELIEVING   PRAYER  29I 

not  already  supplied  in  the  eternal  purpose.  What 
we  dwellers  in  the  lowlands  have  to  do  is  to  draw 
upon  the  highland  reservoir. 

The  wells  of  your  finite  resources  soon  run  dry, 
but  the  resources  of  God  are  infinite.  God  cannot 
force  his  bounty  upon  us.  If  He  could  there  would 
be  nothing  of  human  goodness  left.  The  very 
essence  of  goodness  consists  in  the  giving  of  the  self 
to  the  universal  love  and  the  attempt  to  realise  imper- 
sonal ends.  This  necessitates  a  deliberate  and  con- 
scious appeal  to  the  Infinite,  and  God  requires  that 
appeal  to  be  made,  otherwise  there  could  be  no  such 
thing  as  human  nobleness  and  love.  But  when, 
with  an  unselfish  purpose  in  your  heart,  you  seek  to 
draw  upon  the  universal  love  for  the  means  where- 
with to  express  that  love  in  the  world,  you  can  be 
perfectly  confident  that  you  will  get  what  you  ask 
for,  and  even  more  than  you  ask  for ;  for  your  prayer 
supplies  opportunity  for  the  operation  of  a  great 
spiritual  law.  This  is  what  explains  the  power  of 
such  lives  as  those  of  George  Miiller  and  John 
Wesley,  as  well  as  all  the  humble  and  unheard-of 
saints  of  God  who  only  live  to  do  good  and  find 
their  highest  joy  in  doing  it. 

Now  go  back  to  your  homes  and  try  whether 
what  I  am  now  saying  is  not  true.  Do  not  pray  to 
God  only  now  and  then  and  for  special  things. 
Pray  all  the  time  and  in  everything.  Pray  without 
ceasing.  Keep  on  constantly  turning  towards  the 
Infinite  and  asking  for  strength  to  realise  the  best, 


292  NEW   THEOLOGY    SERMONS 

and  you  will  find  your  life  marvellously  enriched. 
Understand  as  definitely  as  ever  you  can  that  there 
is  nothing  whatever  of  which  you  can  think  or  desire 
but  is  already  prepared  for  you  in  the  eternal  wis- 
dom and  love.  "Your  Father  knoweth  what  things 
ye  have  need  of  before  ye  ask  Him."  Therefore 
"ask  and  ye  shall  receive,  seek  and  ye  shall  find; 
knock  and  it  shall  be  opened  unto  you."  Do  not 
be  ashamed  to  go  to  God  with  the  tiniest  needs  as 
well  as  the  greatest.  Viewed  from  the  side  of  God, 
there  is  nothing  either  great  or  small.  You  have 
a  work  to  do  and  a  life  to  live  for  Him.  Your  work 
is  to  express  some  aspect  of  the  eternal  love  and  to 
conform  your  life  to  it ;  therefore,  no  matter  what 
may  be  wanted  for  the  realisation  of  this  ideal,  it 
is  here  now,  here  in  the  heart  of  God,  waiting  to 
be  claimed.  "Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard, 
neither  have  entered  into  the  heart  of  man  the  things 
which  God  hath  prepared  for  them  that  love  Him." 
I  say  this  is  a  perfectly  glorious  truth,  and  ought 
to  send  us  to  our  knees  with  a  glad  confidence  that 
no  true  prayer  can  ever  go  without  its  answer,  for 
God  cannot  deny  Himself.  The  prayer  of  love 
inspired  by  faith  must  unquestionably  command 
the  resources  of  infinite  love  from  whence  it  came. 
Try  it  in  trouble,  and  see  how  it  will  help  you. 
Some  one  dear  to  you  is  dying,  and  you  cannot  bear 
the  thought  of  life  without  him.  Well,  if  you  will 
think  a  moment  you  will  realise  that  you  do  not 
wish  him  to  live  always  in  this  prison-house  called 


BELIEVING    PRAYER  293 

earth.  What  you  really  want  is  the  continued  com- 
fort and  inspiration  of  his  presence  and  love.  But 
seeing  these  things  came  from  God,  cannot  God 
compensate  you  for  the  temporary  loss  of  them? 
Your  friend  is  going  up  higher,  and  God  is  going 
to  lift  you  higher,  too,  here  and  now,  by  means 
of  this  light  aiSiction  which  is  but  for  a  moment. 
Thousands  of  the  saints  of  God  can  testify  to  the 
reality  of  the  sweetness  of  the  Father's  love  experi- 
enced in  the  house  of  mourning.  You  thought  to 
be  desolated  by  your  bereavement,  you  thought 
your  skies  would  be  for  ever  grey,  and  lo  !  you  have 
found  that  notwithstanding  your  sharp  anguish 
of  spirit  a  great  peace  has  settled  down  upon  your 
soul,  and  the  world  unseen  has  come  suddenly 
nearer,  so  much  nearer  that  the  noises  of  earth  are 
hushed,  and  everything  hard  or  unwelcome  seems 
strangely  small  and  insignificant  in  the  light  and 
love  eternal.  I  say  thousands  have  known  that, 
and  no  doubt  there  are  people  listening  to  me  now 
who  have  found  it  out  just  lately  and  been  utterly 
taken  by  surprise  thereat.  Whereas  you  thought 
to  be  overwhelmed  and  shrouded  in  thick  darkness, 
life  to  you  is  now  clearer  and  fuller  of  meaning  than 
ever,  and  God  has  done  it  all. 

Live  with  God  in  prayer,  and  you  will  find  the 
same  thing  happen  all  the  way  round.  You  will 
expect  the  best  and  get  it,  but  you  will  not  trouble 
much  about  externals.  You  will  be  thoroughly 
happy  in  doing  the  will  of  God  from  the  heart,  and 


294  NEW   THEOLOGY   SERMONS 

you  will  lose  yourself  in  the  glorious  task.  You  will 
never  be  afraid  of  anything,  and  you  will  know  that 
nothing  material  has  any  power  to  harm  you  or 
separate  you  from  the  source  of  all  abiding  joy. 
Take  the  very  highest  ground  when  you  pray,  and 
wait  for  God.    He  will  not  fail  you. 


By  the  Bev.  R.  J.  CAMPBELL 

Minister  of  the  City  Temple,  London 

The  New  Theology 

Cloth,  crom)n  S'vo,  $1.50  net  (postage  7c) 

"  Mr,  Campbell  has  not  designed  the  book  to  meet  the  requirements 
of  scholars  and  theologians,  but  to  convince  plain  laymen  and  per- 
plexed workingmen  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  dead  wood  which 
must  be  cut  away  from  the  religion  of  the  time  before  it  can  be 
adapted  to  modern  progress.  .  .  .  His  opponents  condemn  the  poli- 
tics of  the  book  as  tarred  with  Mr.  Hardie's  Socialist  brush.  That  is 
a  singular  indictment  to  frame  against  a  new  treatise  on  theology." 

—  New  York  Tribune. 

"...  The  book,  therefore,  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  theological 
treatise,  but  rather  as  an  outline  of  what  one  man,  in  a  London  pulpit, 
is  doing  towards  interpretmg  the  gospel  in  terms  consistent  with 
modern  science  and  historical  criticism,  and  its  appeal  is  not  to  scholars 
so  much  as  to  the  average  man,  especially  the  man  who  has  lost  faith  in 
the  traditional  creeds  and  in  the  organized  religion  of  the  day." 

—  Congregationalist. 

"...  And  let  me  say  the  utterance  of  this  one  man  has  created  a 
literature  of  no  mean  dimensions  equipped  with  all  the  grand  saving 
elements  of  the  old  doctrines  and  marked  by  earnest  thought,  genius, 
and  erudition.  .  .  .  All  who  know  Mr.  Campbell  admit  his  goodness 
and  transparent  sincerity.  He  has  stirred  the  intellectual  and  religious 
life  of  England  as  it  has  not  been  stirred  for  many  years."  —  Chicago 
Standard. 

"  From  the  ends  of  the  earth  come  indications  that  Mr.  Campbell's 
crusade  against  the  old  views  has  indeed  set  the  whole  world  discuss- 
ing theology.  From  Australia  and  America  come  opinions  upon  the 
New  Theology,  which  has  penetrated  Roman  Catholic,  Anglican,  and 
Free  Churches  all  over  England.  .  .  .  The  Jews  claim  that  Mr. 
Campbell  is  breaking  down  the  barriers  between  Israelite  and  Gentile, 
while  one  of  the  organs. of  the  Society  of  Friends  sees  in  Mr.  Campbell 
an  exponent  of  Quakerism.  Father  Bernard  Vaughan  on  one  hand 
and  Dr.  Emil  Reich  on  another  have  discussed  aspects  of  the  New 
Theology  —  the  former  seriously  and  the  latter  flippantly — and  a 
nursing  paper  has  recognized  that  the  controversy  comes  within  even 
its  purview." —  Christian  World. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

PUBLISHEKS,  64-66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YOKE 


TOUCHING  THE  RELATIONS  OF  CHRIST 
TO  OUR  MODERN  LIFE 

These  books  a.re  of  special  'value :  — 

By  JOSEPH   ALEXANDER   LEIGHTON,   Ph.D. 

Professor  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology  in  Hobart  College 

JESUS  CHRIST  AND  THE 

CIVILIZATION  OF  TO-DAY 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $I.J0  net 

The  aim  of  this  work  is  to  set  forth  the  ethical  teaching  of  Jesus  as 
furnishing  a  moral  and  spiritual  foundation  for  the  life  of  modern 
culture.  It  considers  the  attitude  of  Jesus,  both  towards  the  world 
of  nature  and  towards  the  human  will,  and  examines  the  moral  prin- 
ciples of  Jesus  in  their  application  to  the  individual  life  and  to  society. 
The  significance  of  Jesus'  personality  as  an  ethical  leader  is  also  con- 
sidered. 


By   HENRY  S.   NASH 

Professor    of  New    Testament    Interpretation    in    the   Episcopal 
Theological  School  at  Cambridge 

GENESIS  OF  THE 
SOCIAL  CONSCIENCE 

The  theme  is  the  relation  between  the  establishment  of  Christianity 
in  Europe  and  the  Social  Question. 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $J.JO 

ETHICS  AND  REVELATION 

"This  is  a  great  book.  It  is  a  poem  in  prose,  a  study  in  English 
—  felicitous  and  forcible,  a  study  in  history  and  sociology,  in  the  sub- 
jective spiritual  life  and  in  ecclesiastical  fundamentals.  The  author  is 
a  rare  rhetorician  and  guides  one  through  gardens  of  beauty,  but  they 
are  gardens  among  the  mountains.  .  .  .  Every  word  of  the  six  lec- 
tures should  be  read  by  thoughtful  men  of  the  day,  ministers  and  lay- 
men, believers  and  sceptics."  —  John  H.  Vincent. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND  THE 
SOCIAL  QUESTION 

An  Examination  of  the  Teaching  of  Jesus  in  its  Relation  to 
Some  Problems  of  Modern  Social  Life 

By  FRANCIS  GREENWOOD  PEABODY 

Author  of  "  The  Religioji  of  an  Educated  Alan"  etc, 

Qoth        J2mo        $1.50 

"In  this ' Examination  of  the  Teaching  of  Jesus  in  its  Relation  to  Some 
of  the  Problems  of  Modern  Social  Life,'  Professor  Peabody  begins  with  a 
careful  discussion  of  the  cofnprekefisiveness  of  this  teaching  as  at  once  per- 
fectly apt  and  adequate  to  every  possible  condition  and  need.  He  then 
considers  the  social  principles  of  this  teaching  ;  its  relation  to  the  family, 
to  the  rich,  to  the  care  of  the  poor,  to  the  industrial  order.  The  conclud- 
ing chapter  is  especially  good,  setting  forth  '  the  Correlation  of  the  Social 
Questions.'  It  is  shown  how  this  fact  should  affect  those  who  are  actually 
interested  in  particular  reforms."  —  Times- Her  aid,  Chicago. 

"It  is  vital,  searching,  comprehensive.  The  Christian  reader  will  find  it 
an  illumination  ;   the  non-Christian  a  revelation."  —  The  Epworth  Herald 

"The  author  is  Professor  of  Christian  Morals  in  Harvard  University, 
and  his  book  is  a  critical  examination  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  in  its  rela- 
tion to  some  of  the  problems  of  modern  social  life.  Professor  Peabody 
discusses  the  various  phases  of  Christian  socialism  in  this  country  and  in 
Europe."  —  The  Baltimore  Sun. 

"  Discussing  in  '  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question '  the  comprehen- 
siveness of  the  Master's  teaching,  Francis  Greenwood  Peabody,  Plummer 
Professor  of  Christian  Morals  in  Harvard  University,  says  that  '  each  new 
age  or  movement  or  personal  desire  seems  to  itself  to  receive  with  a  pecul- 
iar fulness  its  special  teaching.'  The  unexhausted  gospel  of  Jesus  touches 
each  new  problem  and  new  need  with  its  illuminating  power." 

—  St.  Louis  Globe-Democrat. 

"  A  thoughtful  and  reflective  examination  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus  in 
relation  to  some  of  the  problems  of  modern  social  life." 

—  Louisville  Courier-Journal. 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue,   New  York 


By  the  REV.   WALTER   RAUSCHENBUSCH 

Professor  of  Church  History  in  Rochester  Theological  Seminary 


CHRISTIANITY  AND 
THE  SCX:iAL  CRISIS 


Cloth,  i2mo,  $i.jo  net 


"  It  is  of  the  sort  to  make  its  readers  feel  that  the  book  was  bravely 
written  to  free  an  honest  man's  heart;  that  conscientious  scholarship, 
hard  thinking,  and  the  determination  to  tell  the  truth  as  he  sees  it, 
have  wrought  it  out  and  enriched  it ;  that  it  is  written  in  a  clear, 
incisive  style  ;  that  stern  passion  and  gentle  sentiment  stir  at  times 
among  the  words,  and  keen  wit  and  grim  humor  flash  here  and  there 
in  the  turn  of  a  sentence  ;  and  that  there  is  a  noble  end  in  view.  If 
the  hope  be  too  confident,  if  there  be  once  in  a  while  a  step  taken 
beyond  the  line  of  justice  into  indignation,  if  a  quaint  old  prejudice 
or  even  animosity  bustles  to  the  front  in  an  emergency  —  no  matter. 
It  is  a  book  to  like,  to  learn  from,  and,  though  the  theme  be  sad  and 
serious,  to  be  charmed  with."  —  jV.  Y.  Times'  Sat,  Review  of  Books. 


By  the  REV.   SHAILER   MATHEWS 

Professor  of  New  Testament  History  and  Interpretation  in  the 
University  of  Chicago 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE 
CHANGING  ORDER 


Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 


"...  a  most  interesting  and  valuable  contribution  to  the  literature 
of  a  subject  that  is  growing  in  popular  attention  every  day.  While 
among  the  deeply,  really  religious  and  genuinely  scientific  there  is  no 
conflict  or  antagonism  where  even  there  is  not  accord,  this  unfortu- 
nately is  not  commonly  the  case  among  the  masses  who  have  only 
caught  the  forms  of  religious  and  scientific  knowledge  without  their 
spirit.  This  book  is  addressed  much  more  it  seems  to  the  religious 
than  the  scientific,  possibly  because  the  latter  have  the  less  need  for 
repentance.  Those  who  are  troubled  in  any  way  at  the  seeming  con- 
flict between  the  demands  of  faith,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  experiences 
of  their  own  reason  and  the  problems  of  modern  social  and  industrial 
life  will  find  here  much  sage,  illuminating,  and  practical  counsel." 

—  Evening  Post. 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS,  64-66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 


Date  Due 

Mr  7  ^"36 

f^CULll 

^ 

1    1012  01028  7359 


